Marzipan - Etymology

Etymology

The German name has largely ousted the original English name marchpane with the same apparent derivation: "March bread." Marzapane is documented earlier in Italian than in any other language, and the sense "bread" for pan is Romance. The origin could be from the Latin term "martius panis", which means bread of march. However, the ultimate etymology is unclear; for example, the Italian word derives from the Latin words "Massa" (itself from Greek Μάζα "Maza") meaning pastry and "Pan" meaning bread, this can be particularly seen in the Provençal massapan, the Portuguese maçapão (where 'ç' is an alternative form for the phoneme 'ss') and old Spanish mazapán - the change from 'ss' to 'z' in Latin words was common in old Spanish and the 'r' appeared later. Though, it could also be derived from martis pan, bread of March. Among the other possible etymologies set forth in the Oxford English Dictionary, one theory proposes that the word "marzipan" may be a corruption of Martaban, a Burmese city famous for its jars.

The Real Academia Española suggests the idea of the Spanish word mazapán to be derived from the Hispanic Arabic بسمة pičmáṭ, which is derived from the Greek παξαμάδιον.

Another source could be from Arabic موثابان mawthaban "king who sits still." Partridge’s Origins, a usually trustworthy etymological dictionary, follows this line of thought. The Arabic, Latinized as matapanus, was used to describe a Venetian coin depicting an enthroned Christ the King. These coins were stored in ornate boxes. From about the fifteenth century, when the coins were no longer in circulation, the boxes became decorative containers for storing and serving luxury sweetmeats. One such luxury that crept into the box in the sixteenth century is the now-famous almond-flavored marzipan, named (at least proximately) after the box in which it was stored.

However, if marzipan has its origin in Persia, it is not unlikely that the name may come from Marzban (in Persian: مرزبان, derived from the words Marz مرز meaning "border" or "boundary" and the suffix -ban بان meaning guardian), a class of margraves or military commanders in charge of border provinces of the Sassanid Empire of Persia (Iran) between 3rd and 7th centuries CE.

It is also a possibility that the origin of this dessert and the origin of the term come from different geographical places.