Pomme de terre “potato” in French

-A Geolinguistic Analysis of Lexical Variation-

KAWAGUCHI Yuji
Graduate School of Global Studies
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
E-mail: ykawa@tufs.ac.jp

Flambeau vol.43 2017, p.38-52.

Manuscript received 2017-12-01; Final version 2017-02-02

Summary
Notwithstanding the relatively recent introduction of potatoes to Europe, fairly large lexical
variation can be observed in French dialects. In this study, we first retrace briefly the history of
potatoes in France, from which there appears an intricate relationship between pomme de terre,
topinambour and patate. Next, we review three studies of potato in the Atlas linguistique de la
France and then examine its evolution in l’Atlas linguistique et ethnographique de la Champagne
et de la Brie. The comparison of two linguistic atlases turned out to be problematic in some respects.

Keywords
geolinguistics, pomme de terre, topinambour, ALF, ALCB

© ふらんぼー Flambeau 43 (2017) pp.38–52.

183-8534 東 京 都 府 中 市 朝 日 町 3-11-1 東 京 外 国 語 大 学 フランス語 研 究 室
183-8534 French Section, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 3-11-1
Asahi-cho Fuchu City, Tokyo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.
https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/deed.ja

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Introduction

Today potatoes are one of the most popular ingredients in ordinary French dishes.
Everyone knows what frites are made of. The well-known home-style pot-au-feu cannot
spare potatoes. Potato mousseline is often served as a topping. Potatoes are also an
indispensable ingredient for hachis Parmentier. Though the Auvergne region is today
famous for its aligot made from cheese blended into mashed potatoes, it is really
surprising to discover that at the beginning of the 19 th century, potatoes were rarely used
in cooking in the Tulle area of the neighboring prefecture of Corrèze (Chastanet 2010).
When Leo Spitzer treated dialect forms of potatoes in 1912, he thus entitled his paper as
“Die Namengebung bei neuen Kulturpflanzen im Französischen (Denomination for new
crops in French).” In fact, the cultivation of potatoes in France is not very old and their
use in the human diet much more recent than we could imagine.
In the first section of this paper, we will provide a general sketch of the history of
potatoes in France. Next, three previous contributions, namely those of Leo Spitzer
(1912), Albert Dauzat (1922) and Charles Bruneau (1932), will be recapitulated, and their
geolinguistic analyses reviewed. The third section will be devoted to investigating the
delicate relationship between pomme de terre “potato” and topinambour “Jerusalem
artichoke” from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries through several contemporary
dictionaries and studies of agronomy. Finally, as a case study of lexical variation through
time, we will outline the dialectal situation of l’Atlas linguistique et ethnographique de
la Champagne et de la Brie (ALCB) which was published more than sixty years after The
Linguistic Atlas of France (Atlas linguistique de la France (ALF)) and demonstrate how
complex and problematic the lexical variation of potatoes is.

1. History of potatoes in France

Historically speaking, potatoes have a long history before their introduction to

France. Potatoes originated from South America, and were brought to Europe for the first
time by Francisco Pizarro in 1532 (Matsubara 1974: 34) 1 . The existence of potatoes has
been known since the famous book by Olivier de Serres (1539-1619), but under the name
of cartoufle. He writes “Cartoufle. It is a shrub, called Cartoufle, bearing fruit of the
same name, similar to truffles, and named such by some. It came from Switzerland, in
Dauphiné, a little while ago. (Cartoufle. C'est arbuste, dit Cartoufle, porte fruit de mesme

This paper is a revised version of the original presented in the Sixteenth International Conference
(Methods XVI), Workshop 4: Contrastive Geolinguistics, held on August 10, 2017 at National
Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL). The research is supported by JSPS
KAKENHI Grant Numbers 16H03415 and 16H03442.
1 According to another source, this plant began to be cultivated from 1526 in the city of Avila of

Spain (Bruneau 1932: 59).

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nom, semblable à truffes, & par d'aucuns ainsi appellé. Il est venu de Suisse, en Dauphiné,
despuis peu de temps en çà.), [sic]” (de Serres 1600: 563). Olivier de Serres was growing
potatoes in his garden at Villeneuve de Berg in the prefecture of Ardèche. Advocating
potatoes as a part of the human diet, he adds that “As for the taste, the cook prepares
them in such a way, so that little diversity is recognized from one to the other. (Quant au
goust, le cuisinier les appareille de telle sorte, que peu de diversité y recognoit-on de
l’un à l’autre. [sic])” (de Serres 1605: 564).
The name of pomme de terre is based on the Latin expression MALUM TERRAE
“fruit of ground,” but its meaning was far from potatoes for a very long time. Trésor de
la Langue Française Informatisé ( TLFi) explains that in 1240 it designated “edible tuber”
or “squash.” Since then, there have been several attestations of pomme de terre referring
to various other plants, e.g. “mandrake root” in 1488, “cyclamen bulb” in the fifteenth
century, “birthwort (artistolochia)” in 1562 and “Jerusalem artichoke” in 1655.
Pomme de terre indicating SOLANUM TUBEROSUM, i.e. potatoes, was attested for
the first time in Matière Médicale et Suite de la Matière Médicale, published in 1750, the
French translation of Tractatus de materia medica by Stephano Francisco Geoffroy
(1672-1731): “Pomme de terre ou la Batate commune des jardins, Solanum tuberosum
esculenium [sic] (t.X. 1750, p.94)” (Tolmer 1946: 298). Consequently, Thresor de la
langue francoyse, tant ancienne que moderne (1606) of Jean Nicot had no entry for
pomme de terre. As evidenced above, the meaning of pomme de terre has changed
considerably over the course of time, with many twists and turns.
Gaspard Bauhin (1560-1624) was cultivating potatoes in Basel in 1596. It was
Bauhin, with John Gerard, who first recorded the term potato in their books (Salaman
1985: 77). Potatoes existed in France, England, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy
and Spain around the end of sixteenth century. There is written proof that potatoes were
grown in the Royal Garden in 1665 (op. cit., 121-122) and according to the description
in Sébastien Vaillant’s Botanicon parisiense (1669-1722), potatoes seemed to be grown
around Paris (Vaillant 1727: 188). As far as France is concerned, the first introduction of
potatoes took place in the Franche-Comté and Vosges regions via Switzerland (Roze
1898: 117). Nevertheless, historical documents are in general lacking evidence to
demonstrate how potatoes propagated later in neighboring regions. Potatoes were not
appreciated in most of France, but in the north-east of France, potatoes took possession
of French soil before the middle of the sixteenth century (Clos 1874: 138). Potatoes
spread rapidly in the Franche-Comté, Vosges, and Bourgogne regions around 1592. The
description of potatoes was fairly mottled in the following centuries. Anne Robert
Jacques Turgot (1727-1781), a man of the Enlightenment, writes that pomme de terre is
widespread in the prefecture of Tarn in Languedoc region, while almost inexistent in
Toulouse in 1761. Dominique Villars describes in 1787 the cultivation of potatoes from
the low plains of the Provence region to the plateaus of the Alps (Roze 1898: 160-161).

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Claret de la Tourette also tells us in 1770 that potatoes were grown in the Pilat region of
the Massif Central and the Lyonnais region. He appreciates the potato, expressing that
“its tuberous root provides good and healthy food; its taste is preferable to the truffe and
Jerusalem artichoke of Englishmen (sa racine tubéreuse fournit un aliment bon et sain ;
son goût est préférable à la truffe du Taupinambour des Anglais [sic])” (op. cit., 161).
For France, potatoes were made popular in particularly thanks to Antoine-Augustin
Parmentier (1737-1813). It is said that his passion for potatoes arose from his personal
experience. Since the age of twenty, he had been an assistant pharmacist in the army of
Hanover. He remained in Germany during the seven-year war. Captured five times, he
was able to appreciate the nutritional value of potatoes during his difficult days as a
captive. Wounded, he spent a significant amount of time at Francofort and learned
chemistry. Finally released in 1763, he returned to Paris and wrote several reports on
potatoes. In 1766, he was working at the pharmacy of the Hotel Invalid (Hôtel des
Invalides), which he became the director of in 1772 (Feytaud 1949: 26). There had been
some worrisome news for several years about the shortage of crops in Central Europe,
where famine was threatening. The Academy of Sciences, Literature and Arts of Besançon
proposed as a subject of competition the “Study of food substances which might alleviate
the calamities of famine.” Its laureate was Parmentier with his chemical study of potatoes
(op.cit., 27).
Nevertheless, even after the success of Parmentier’s chemical work, Denis Diderot
(1713-1784) still remarks in his Encyclopédie that potatoes cannot be easily considered
as food. He wrote that “This root, in what manner it may be prepared, is bland and
farinaceous. It cannot be counted among pleasant foods; (Cette racine, de quelque
maniere qu’on l’apprête, est fade & farineuse. Elle ne sauroit être comptée parmi les
aliments agréables; [sic])” (D’Alembert & Diderot 1750 tome 13: 4). In Chapter IV of
his Eléments d’Agriculture, Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1700-1782) describes
pomme de terres as “Roots which we cultivate for the pasture of livestock. (Des racines
qu’on cultive pour la nourriture du bétail. [sic])” (Duhamel du Monceau 1779: 188). The
use of pomme de terre as part of the human diet, not as pasture, took a very long time to
be realized. As we mention above, potatoes are classified among newly cultivated crops
in France. This delay in the establishment of potatoes was partly reinforced by
superstitions and precautions about potatoes. It was a superstitious belief that eating
potatoes would cause leprosy, and this was the main reason Gaspard Bauhin gave up the
cultivation of potatoes in the Franche-Comté region (Roze 1898: 122). It is true that we
must be cautious with potatoes at the time of their germination, because germinating
potatoes can contain the alkaloid toxin called solanine.
Encyclopédie explains that the pomme de terre was used as food in Germany,
Switzerland, Great Britain, and Ireland (D’Alembert & Diderot 1779 tome 34: 351). In
his Traité sur la culture et les usages des pommes de terre, de la patate, et du topinambour,

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Parmentier reports in detail how to prepare pomme de terre for eating (Parmentier 1789:
234-299). In spite of the utility of potatoes, emphasized by Turgot, and of Parmentier’s
efforts to make potatoes popular in France, superstitions still remained in the countryside
in the nineteenth century. For instance, in Dinan, a town in the prefecture of Côte-du-
Nord, a servant ate too many potatoes and started to call down curses so that potatoes did
not grow for six years in that town. In the Poitou region, people did not cook potatoes
and shallots at night. If they did, they would never be cured from the rabies (Sebillot
1985: 124 and 135).

2. Previous studies

2.1. Leo Spitzer (1912)

To my knowledge, Leo Spitzer (1887-1960) was the first to interpret the map of
potatoes, No.1057 “Peler LES POMMES DE TERRE (Peel POTATOES)” of the ALF. He
distinguished three main lexical forms on the map: patate, pomme de terre and truffe (see
the map in Appendix 1).
Patate, indicated by the light brown area, is located generally along the west coast.
TLFi recounts that pattates, as attested in 1582, means “plant of warm areas grown for
its large edible tubers with sweetish flesh (plante des régions chaudes cultivée pour ses
gros tubers comestibles à chair douceâtre ) ” which probably refers to sweet potatoes, and
patate in 1601-03 with the same meaning. Patate is a loanword through the intermediary
of the Spanish word patata and originally refers to sweet potatoes. It appears safe to
declare that patate is a relatively old name for potato in France. The word patate was
circulated by virtue of the maritime trade on the west coast and spread gradually in the
dialects of the western region, Ile-de-France, the central region, and Champagne. In
Dictionnaire universel, Contenant generalement tous les mots françois (1727), Antoine
Furetière wrote “POMME DE TERRE. See PATATE. It's the same thing. (POMME DE
TERRE. Voyez PATATE. C’est la même chose. [sic])” (Furetière 1727: 957).
The following interesting excerpt from the Encyclopédie may express geographical
variation in the words for potatoes. “At the beginning of January 1771, I was sending
pommes de terre from Ireland. From Bordeaux to Lyon, we declared it patates, while in
the consignment note for Lyon, we declared it truffes at Toulouse (...) (Au commencement
de janvier, 1771, les pommes de terre que j’avois fait venir d’Irlande étant en route, sous
le nom de patates, de Bordeaux à Lyon, on les désignoit à Toulouse, dans la lettre de
voiture pour Lyon, par celui de truffes (...) [sic])” (D’Alembert et Diderot 1779 tome 34:
351).
It was in the second edition of Eléments d’Agriculture (1779) by Duhamel du
Monceau that pomme de terre was consecrated and differentiated from truffe and patate
(Roze 1989: 142). Spitzer thought that pomme de terre has its root in Paris (see white

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area on the map). He distinguished two different epicenters of pomme de terre and patate.
Pomme de terre spread directly from Paris, while patate spread from the west coast
(Spitzer 1912: 153). Following the principle of lateral areas in linguistic geography, it
appears legitimate to regard the penetration of pomme de terre in northern France as a
recent innovation, and on the contrary, the area of patate as an older innovation.
The third term, truffe (see light blue area in Appendix 1), covers a fairly wide surface
of the South of France. Today truffe means generally a fungus of luxury of Périgord
region, called often black truffe, TUBER MELANOSPORUM in Latin. Even before the
arrival of potatoes, there were many kinds of tubers in France. Truffe might have been a
generic name to represent all those different tubers, so that in Encyclopédie, the entry of
pomme de terre was also redirected to that of truffe (D’Alembert & Diderot 1789 tome
26: 659). But, in southern dialects, truffe signifies nothing more than potato. Describing
L’Ecole du Jardin potager published at Lyon in 1749 by De Combles, Roze explains that
pomme de terre was called truffe by the author, because truffe or patate were the only
known terms (Roze 1898: 128). The city of Lyon is part of the area covered by the term
truffe (see Appendix 1).
In short, the map in Appendix 1 can be examined to explain what has happened in
French dialects over the course of the dynamic lexical variation of potatoes. The
innovation of pomme de terre begins gain ground at the cost of both patate and truffe in
French dialects. Patate will be pushed aside in the periphery of the western coast, while
truffe will resist strongly against the new innovation and finally succeed in stemming the
intrusion of pomme de terre into the South.
Based upon the treatment of initial vowels, Spitzer subcategorized further truffe into
three different subtypes (see Appendix 2). There is a variation among several terms such
as tartifle, tartufle, tartuffe, etc. (see the red and blue areas in Appendix 2). Each variant
comes from the Italian word tartuffoli or the German word Tartoffel. The memory of this
variant can be found today in the name of popular dish tartiflette. In the south of France,
whether can we observe many variants or not, the most representative one is truffe. The
third term trük or trüš is attested mainly in the regions where potatoes do not grow (see
the yellow and light green areas in Appendix 2).

2.2. Albert Dauzat (1922)

Ten years after Spitzer's article, Albert Dauzat (1877-1955) gave a brief
interpretation of the map of pomme de terre in Géographie Linguistique (1922).
Confirming that even before Parmentier, potatoes were introduced into France, he added
different types to Spitzer’s classification without giving us his own interpretative map.
Dauzat remarked that each region borrowed the term for potatoes from its
neighboring region or foreign importer. For instance, the Spanish term patata penetrated
into Gascony and the English potato on the west coast and in Normandy (see light brown

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area of patan and patate in Appendix 1). The term Grundbirn represented by krõpir in
Appendix 1 is attested in Belgium. We can find Kartoffel of the standard High German
in French-speaking Switzerland and tartuffola of the old Italian in the south-east. Dauzat
considered Spitzer’s analysis as an example of the phenomenon of linguistic endosmosis
of neighboring foreign names of potatoes in France (Dauzat 1922: 155). This sort of
linguistic endosmosis can occur frequently in the process of naming some recently
integrated foreign material, and potatoes are a good example. As for the origin of the
term pomme de terre, Dauzat believes in accordance with Spitzer that the spread of
pomme de terre throughout France started from Paris.

2.3. Charles Bruneau (1932)

Another ten years after Dauzat, Charles
Bruneau (1883-1969) analyzed the names of
potatoes in Belgium. He asserted that the
map of pomme de terre in ALF is one of the
most obscure and mysterious maps.
Bruneau suggests that Belgium played
an important role in introducing potatoes in
France. Because patate douce “sweet potato”
had never been cultivated in Belgium, the
term patate could refer exclusively to
potatoes without any confusion with sweet
potatoes (Bruneau 1932: 59). In fact, even
today, French people call potatoes patate.
Patano is observed in the East of the König (1978) p.206
Pyrenees and a part of the Massif Central.
From this geolinguistic ground, Bruneau thinks that it is the area where potatoes were
introduced in the earliest period. However, this appears to be a pure hypothesis.
In the Champagne region, potatoes were cultivated as early as 1754 in Saint-Dizier.
In his Traité de la Culture des terres, Duhamel du Monceau cited a passage from the
journal of a land-owner of Villiers en Lieu near Saint-Dizier. “On April 1754, I planted
corn and potatoes in four areas (Dans le même mois d’Avril 1754, j’ai fait planter du
maïs & des pommes de terre dans 4 journaux [sic])” (Duhamel du Monceau 1754: 61).
As mentioned above, Duhamel du Monceau is regarded as the first advocator of the term
pomme de terre in France. Bruneau therefore considers the region of Saint-Dizier to be
the epicenter of pomme de terre.
Similarly to Dauzat, Bruneau speaks of crompire or crombire, French forms of
German word Grundbirne which means “pear of the ground” (see the above map of potato
lexical forms in the Linguistic Atlas of Germany depicted by Werner König). We can

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find Grumbeere right next to Belgium. However, Bruneau remarks that this crompire
found in the ALF refers to the Jerusalem artichoke, not the potato.
Trük appears only at point 183 on the map of Belgium. Bruneau gives the example
of trouffe at Gérouville and he explains this form as a mixture of truffle and tartoufle
(Bruneau 1932: 63).
The last term, canada, does not signify potato, but rather Jerusalem artichoke. The
Jerusalem artichoke was from Canada, but was confused with potatoes even in the
eighteenth century.

3. Dangerous relationships between potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes

As already mentioned occasionally in this paper, potatoes were not made popular
until relatively recent times. It is for this reason that potatoes are often confused with
other tubers, including Jerusalem artichokes.
In 1605, Jerusalem artichokes were discovered in Canada by the French explorer
Samuel de Champlain, and he brought them back in 1607. Its French name topinambour
comes from the name of a group of people from the Americas, Toupinambou
(Tupinambas), six of whom came to Paris in 1618 and were officially invited to the Royal
Court (Bruneau 1932: 67). The English name is based upon its taste similar to artichoke.
Louis Lémery (1677-1743) in his Traités des aliments wrote that “its taste approaches
that of the artichoke (d’un goût approchant de celui de l’Artichaud [sic]).”
“Topinambours are poires de terre, because they are born in the earth, attached to the
branches of the root that carry them. Their origin comes from the country of topinambours
in the West Indies. They are used for food fairly commonly there. (Les Topinambours
sont appellez des Poires de terre, parcequ’ils naissent dans la terre, attachez aux branches
de la racine qui les porte. Leur origine vient du pays des Topinambours dans les Indes.
Ils sont ici assez en usage parmi les aliments. [sic])” (Lémery 1705: 161-162). It is said
that topinambour has spread quickly in Europe because it is easy to cultivate. The rapid
and early diffusion of this tuber seems to have caused complications and confusion. In
Addenda au FEW XIV (Orientalia), we find a series of subcategorized names for
topinambour: artichaut de Jérusalem, artichaut d’hiver, archichaut de terre, artichaut
d’Inde, artichaut du Canada (Arveiller 1999: 181-182). Be that as it may, Jerusalem
artichokes were doubtlessly established among French people much earlier than pomme
de terre, so it would be easy to understand why the newcomer pomme de terre was often
confused with Jerusalem artichokes. As noted by Bruneau, canada and crompire, attested
in the extreme North of France or Belgium, do not represent potatoes, but Jerusalem
artichokes.
The following example demonstrates the perplexity of the dictionary editor faced
with the terms for potatoes in French. In the 1690 edition of Dictionnaire universel

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françois & latin, Antoine Furetière (1619-1688) does not provide entries for patate,
pomme de terre and topinambour, but does for truffle and truffe. In the 1727 edition, the
entry for pomme de terre was redirected to that of patate. And in the entry of patate, he
explains: “Potatoes are very common in Ireland, and the inhabitants have always made
great use of them. They are also commonly found in England, the Netherlands, and
elsewhere. (Les patates sont fort communes en Irlande, & les habitans en ont toûjours
fait grand usage. On les trouve assez communément aussi en Angleterre, dans les Païs-
Bas, & ailleurs. [sic])” (Furetière 1727 tome 3: 769). There is also the entry for
topinambour with additional information: “of a sweet & agreeable taste, which is similar
to that of artichoke when they are cooked. They are accommodated in different ways to
eat them. In Latin helianthemum indicum tuberosum. (d’un goût doux & agreable,
approchant quand ils sont cuits, de celui de l’artichaud. On les accommode de diverses
manieres pour les manger. En Latin helianthemum indicum tuberosum. [sic]).” (Furetière
1727 tome 4: 649). In the 1732 edition, the entry of topinambour still existed, but the
entry of pomme de terre was eliminated. And in the new 1771 edition, this entry was
curiously redirected to topinambour.
The same kind of disorder can be found in Dictionnaire de l’Académie française. In
the third edition, there are no entries for either patate or pomme de terre, but topinambour
has a new entry (Dic.Acad. 3 rd 1740: 782). In the fourth edition, we find the entry patate,
but redirected to batate. And in the fifth edition, the entry patate is defined as a “sort of
pomme de terre (Espèce de pomme de terre [sic])” (Dic.Acad. 5 th 1798: 244), but
curiously there is no entry for pomme de terre. In the sixth edition, patate means “Plant
of the genus Bindweed, which has large tuberous roots similar to pommes de terre (…)
(Plante du genre des Liserons, qui a de grosses racines tuberculeuses semblables à des
pommes de terre. (...)) [sic]” (Dic.Acad. 6 th 1835: 366). And in the most recent edition,
there an entry for pomme de terre appears for the first time with the following definition:
“Plant of the genus Solanum, the roots of which are furnished with a multitude of tubers
good to eat, (...) (Plante du genre des Solanums, dont les racines sont garnies d’une
multitude de tubercules bons à manger, (...)) [sic]” (op. cit., 454).
Viewed from the evolution in the entries of Dictionnaire de l’Académie, the
emergence of pomme de terre took place between 1740 and 1835. There are several
important historical facts which favor of the establishment of the term pomme de terre.
First, on December 7, 1772, the Faculty of Medicine of Paris officially approved
Parmentier’s intelligent work and declared that the consumption of pomme de terre was
safe. Bruneau thought that pomme de terre triumphed over topinambour in this year
(Bruneau 1932: 77). Second, in the second edition of Eléments d’Agriculture (1779),
Duhamel du Monceau consecrated the term pomme de terre, distinguishing it clearly from
truffe and patate (Roze 1989: 142). In the same year, Encyclopédie paid attention to the
fact that “Pomme de terre, as it is properly called, is not patate or Jerusalem artichoke,

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as we shall see, although several authors have confounded these three kinds of fruit. (La
pomme de terre proprement dite, n’est ni la patate, ni le topinambour, comme nous
l’allons faire voir, quoique plusieurs auteurs aient confondus ces trois sortes de fruits de
terre. [sic])” (D’Alembert & Didedrot 1779 tome 34: 347). And finally, with continuous
chemical investigations, Parmentier endeavored to popularize pomme de terre all over
the country and published in 1789 his Traité sur la culture et les usages des pommes de
terre, de la patate, et du topinambour, the conclusion of which is a kind of declaration
of the victory of pomme de terre. He declared that “there is no food plant more generally
useful than pommes de terre. (Il n’existe pas de plante alimentaire plus généralement
utile que les pommes de terre [sic])” (Parmentier 1789: 385).

Concluding remarks

What should we learn from this complex history of potato and from the distribution
of several dialect forms in the ALF? First, it is important to understand that the triumphant
emergence and generalization of pomme de terre all over the country since the nineteenth
century will not constitute the end of our long story. The dialect situation of the ALF
shows explicitly the lexical variation of potato at the end of the nineteenth century:
besides pomme de terre, there is a tapestry of patate, truffe, tartouffle, crompire, canada,
truc, pmot, and kmot (Poirot 1913), in which topinambour is possibly hidden, presumably
in the areas of crompire and canada. Thus, instead of forming a hasty conclusion, it
would be better for us to continue to more closely analyze another regional atlas
published after the ALF. For this purpose, we will choose the region near Paris, which is
included in the white colored area (pomme de terre) in the ALF.
In the 1960s, that is, more than sixty years after the inquiry of Edmond Edmont for
the ALF, Henri Bourcelot conducted his dialectological survey in the regions of
Champagne and Brie. The result of pomme de terre given in Appendix 3 is far from what
could be imagined from the ALF, for the lexical variation appears to be complex enough
still, even in the region next to the capital. Recall that Bruneau considers the map of
pomme de terre as one of the most obscure and mysterious ones in the ALF.
Canada covers a prolonged area to the south into the prefecture of Marne (see dark
brown area in Appendix 1 and the symbol # in Appendix 3). Tartouffe remains still in
almost the same area (see dark blue in Appendix 1 and the symbol × in Appendix 3).
However, a striking and strange difference can be observed. The diffusion of pomme de
terre seems here impeded by the western strong wall of patate in the prefectures of Seine-
et-Marne, Aube, and Yonne (see the symbols 〇 ● ◎ and △ in Appendix 3).
Geolinguistically speaking, the innovation of pomme de terre does not seem to take place
from Paris, but from the East. In this regard, as mentioned in Section 2.3, potatoes were
cultivated as early as 1754 at Villiers en Lieu next to Saint-Dizier. If we accept Bruneau’s

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assumption, the starting point of the propagation of pomme de terre was not Paris, but
rather in the east of Champagne. The distribution of pomme de terre in the ALCB will
more accurately reflect the dynamic nature of this innovation, the new wave of pomme
de terre launching from the east of Champagne being confronted with great hindrance of
its regional rival patate near Paris. In the ALF, the prefecture of Haute-Marne is occupied
with pomme de terre, while on the contrary, the term treuffe permeates the same
prefecture in the ALCB. We can observe here that the principle of chronological and
geographical continuity is violated, since the earlier ALF appears to show a more recent
situation than the later ALCB. In addition to this embarrassing discovery, the most
mysterious thing lies in the fact that, apart from the above-mentioned regional forms,
Bourcelot has found the form cartoffe at all points of his survey. This variant that
apparently originates from the German Kartoffel was never attested, for reasons we do
not know, in the enquête of Edmont. This phenomenon is a real riddle. We have been in
full pursuit of the final stage of the lexical variation or evolution of potatoes from the
sixteenth century up to today. However, this discovery sends us right back to the initial
stage from which this evolution started, with the term cartoufle, named as such by Olivier
de Serres in 1600. The map of potato of the ALF is, as declared by Bruneau, one of the
most mysterious maps.

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Appendix 1

Spitzer (1921) Tafel 2

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Appendix 2

Spitzer (1921) Tafel 3

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Appendix 3

ALCB No.686 pomme de terre

△ patate × tartouffe
○ pomme de terre ♪ ɕiruy = citrouille ?
● pomme terre ➨ fouilleuses (longues et jaunes)
◎ pomme-né-terre ♟ cartoufle
＃ canada ☾ crompire
□ treuffe ◇ treffe
■ truffe

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