The root of our egg is, well, a chicken or at least a bird. The Indo-European was oyyo and gives us our egg as well as the Latin ovum. There’s a resonable change that’s it originally came from awi, the root for bird. From awi hatches all the bird-like words: from aviary, aviation and avis. Meanwhile, ovum gives us our ovaries, the egg-shaped oval, and the French egg oeuf.
Despite not coming from birds, oyyo also gives us caviar, or fish eggs. From the root they become little eggs in Persian or khaviyar, where you can see our name start to hatch. It goes to finishing school in Italian, then French to becoming our caviar.
Our breakfast omelet might look related but it’s named for it’s blade-like shape. It’s from Latin lamella for a thin, small plate.
When you see at an oblong purple eggplant the naming association may seem like a stretch. But it’s less crazy when you see the less common variety that provoked the name. Note that almost no one else calls them by that. Travel elsewhere and you’ll find the them called something like the British or French aubergine. Those come from the Arabic al-badinjan. But the really naming happened earlier in Sanskrit where vatigagama meant anti-fart vegetable, suggesting that reduced intestinal gas. There is some debate because our best translation of the word is closer to wind go, where go could mean either motivator or preventer.
On the other hand there is no debate about the it’s name cousin pumpernickel. That dark German bread is referred to as a fart-demon, coming from fart, pumpern, and goblin, nickel.
- egg
- oeuf
- caviar
- omelet
- eggplant
- aubergine
- pumpernickel
the journal of gastroetymology 