Names and History
The etymology of caraway is complex and poorly understood.
Caraway has been called by many names in different regions, with names deriving from the Latin cuminum (cumin), the Greek karon (again, cumin), which was adapted into Latin as carum (now meaning caraway), and the Sanskrit karavi, sometimes translated as "caraway" but other times understood to mean "fennel." The Italian finocchio meridionale (meridian fennel) suggests these shared roots, while cumino tedesco (German cumin) again points towards cumin—though caraway also has its own name in Italian, caro . Other languages share similar peculiarities, with the Norwegian name karve, Yiddish borrowing the German Kümmel (caraway) as kimmel to mean caraway, yet using the Semitic term kamoon for cumin, which is Kreuzkümmel in German. In Iran it’s called “Zireh”, which mostly cultivated in Kerman province in the south east of the country. In India it is commonly called Shahi Jeera.
English usage of the term caraway dates back to at least 1440, and is considered by Skeat to be of Arabic origin, though Katzer believes the Arabic al-karawya (cf. Spanish alcaravea) to be derived from the Latin carum.
Read more about this topic: Carraway
Famous quotes containing the words names and/or history:
“To you, more than to any others, the privilege is given, to assure that happiness [of saving the Union], and swell that grandeur, and to link your own names therewith forever.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)