Names
Also known as the Chinese gooseberry, the fruit was renamed for export marketing reasons in the 1950s; briefly to melonette, and then later by New Zealand exporters to kiwifruit. The name "kiwifruit" comes from the kiwi—a brown flightless bird and New Zealand's national symbol. Kiwi is also a colloquial name for New Zealanders. The fruit had a long history before it was commercialized as kiwifruit, and therefore had many other names.
In Chinese, the word for most wild or local varieties of the kiwifruit is transliterated as the Macaque peach ( 獼猴桃 Pinyin: míhóu táo). The imported varieties are often referred to as wonderful fruit (奇異果 Pinyin: qíyì guǒ), the Chinese version of the original trademarked term kiwifruit. See the table below for other Chinese words for kiwifruit.
| Transliteration | Chinese |
|---|---|
| Macaque pear | 獼猴梨 Pinyin: míhóu lí |
| Vine pear | 藤梨 Pinyin: téng lí |
| Sunny peach | 陽桃 Pinyin: yáng táo |
| Wood berry | 木子 Pinyin: mù zi |
| Hairy bush fruit | 毛木果 Pinyin: máo mù guǒ |
In Japanese, see the table below.
| Transliteration | Japanese |
|---|---|
| Macaque pear | 猿梨 サルナシ sarunashi |
Read more about this topic: Kiwifruit
Famous quotes containing the word names:
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—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)