Shut
up, I’m proud of that name.
Since
it’s Halloween (!!!), why not look at the origin of the word pumpkin, and other
gourds that pop up this time of year?
First
of all, gourd itself showed up in the fourteenth century from the Anglo
French gourde
and Old
French coorde,
which can then be traced to the classical Latin cucurbita,
which just means gourd or pumpkin. It’s origin before there is unknown, although some
people think it might be related to the word for cucumber: cucumis. Spelling-wise that makes sense, but the first
lesson you should learn about etymology is that it never makes sense.
Pumpkin itself showed up in the mid seventeenth century,
although it did appear in English before that as pompone/pumpion. No K though. It comes from the Middle French pompon and classical Latin pepon, watermelon.
They of course took that from the Greek pepon,
which means melon,
and is thought to be related to peptein,
to cook, descended from the Proto
Indo European pekw-, cook or ripen. This one makes even less sense
than usual.
Now, squash. Like the food, not what
you do to something. Because those aren’t related at all. Remember what I said
about etymology making no sense? See, the gourd showed up in the mid seventeenth century, coming from the
Narraganset askutasquash, “the things
that may be eaten raw”. It’s just a coincidence that it happens to be the same
as squashing something, although I’m sure the fact that it was already a word
in English helped people decide to just call that type of gourd a “squash”.
Finally today, zucchini showed up
fairly recently, in the early twentieth century.
It’s from the Italian zucchino,
zucchini,
from zucca, which means… pumpkin.
We’ve come full circle.
Sources
