Cinnamon - Etymology

Etymology

The name cinnamon comes through the Greek kinnámōmon from Phoenician.

Cinnamon is the name for perhaps a dozen species of trees and the commercial spice products that some of them produce. All are members of the genus Cinnamomum in the family Lauraceae. Only a few of them are grown commercially for spice.

In Sri Lanka, in Sinhala, cinnamon is known as kurundu (කුරුඳු), recorded in English in the 17th century as Korunda. In Indonesia, where it is cultivated in Java and Sumatra, it is called kayu manis ("sweet wood") and sometimes cassia vera, the "real" cassia. In several European languages, the word for cinnamon comes from the Latin word cannella, a diminutive of canna, "cane".

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