SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS

Number 338 January, 2024

Mapping the Language of Spices:

A Corpus-Based, Philological Study
on the Words of the Spice Domain

by
Gábor Parti

Victor H. Mair, Editor

Sino-Platonic Papers
Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305 USA
vmair@sas.upenn.edu
www.sino-platonic.org
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 Mapping the Language of Spices:
A Corpus-Based, Philological Study on the Words of the Spice Domain

Gábor Parti
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

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ABSTRACT

Most of the existing literature on spices is to be found in the areas of gastronomy, botany,
and history. This study instead investigates spices on a linguistic level. It aims to be a
comprehensive linguistic account of the items of the spice trade. Because of their
attractive aroma and medicinal value, at certain points in history these pieces of dried
plant matter have been highly desired, and from early on, they were ideal products for
trade. Cultural contact and exchange and the introduction of new cultural items beget
situations of language contact and linguistic acculturation. In the case of spices, not only
do we have a set of items that traveled around the world, but also a set of names. This
language domain is very rich in loanwords and Wanderwörter. In addition, it supplies us
with myriad cases in which spice names are innovations. Still more interesting is that
examples in English, Arabic, and Chinese—languages that represent major powers in
the spice trade at different times—are here compared.
After selecting a set of twenty-four spices, I collected data on their names and
related etymologies. From these I selected six spices to examine in detail regarding their
identity, botany, history, spread, and names.
The paper has two main parts. The first presents the geographic and linguistic
diffusion of spices and their names. I here track and explain word origins and their
subsequent spread by tracing the materials and the propagation of the accompanying
Wanderwort. This part relies on philological literature and tools from historical
linguistics such as etymological research, as well as geospatial visualizations. Part two
examines the language of spices, referring to the terminology and nomenclature related
to the spice domain from linguistic-cognitive perspectives. Focusing on the structure
and components of 360 collected spice names, this section is a systematic investigation
into how humans name spices: the mechanisms and motivations behind the naming
principles and the ways these might relate to the salient sensory features of the products
(their strong gustatory, olfactory, or visual stimuli). Conclusions are offered regarding the
connections between the physical properties of the spices, their patterns of diffusion,
and the effect of prototypical spices on general naming principles. Besides being a novel

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and original approach to researching and categorizing spices, from a linguistic point of
view, this study offers new insights into our knowledge about wandering loanwords and
the effect of the highly sensory nature of spices in the naming process adopted by a
community. It is also intended to be the basis for a working database for future research
and to dispel some of the confusion surrounding spice names.

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CONTENTS

Abstract 2
Glossary 6
Source Abbreviations 7
Symbols and Notation 9
1. Introduction 10
1.1 Significance 10
1.2 Originality 11
1.3 Problem Statement 12
1.4 Aims 14
1.5 Definitions 15
1.6 Scope 18
1.7 Contribution 23
1.8 Layout 23
2. Background 24
2.1 Literature Review 24
2.2 Research Gap 33
2.3 Theoretical Framework 37
3. Methodology 42
3.1 Research Design Principles 42
3.2 Data Collection 48
3.3 Sources 54
3.4 Corpora 55
3.5 Illustrations 57
4. The Spices 58
4.1 Allspice 62
4.2 Asafoetida 77
4.3 Cardamom 87
4.4 Cinnamon and Cassia 105
4.5 Black Pepper and Long Pepper 140
4.6 Turmeric 159

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5. The Diffusion of Spices 167

5.1 The Geographic Distribution of Spices 167
5.2 The Linguistic Diffusion of Spices 176
6. The Language of Spices 193
6.1 Overview: Spice Names in Numbers 193
6.2 The Analysis of Spice Nomenclature 196
6.3 Spice Name Analysis: The Example of Star Anise 204
7. Conclusion 208
7.1 Limitations 212
7.2 Future Studies 213
Primary Sources 215
Bibliography 217

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GLOSSARY

bencao the Chinese term for materia medica, works that record the sources and
applications of medicinal substances (本草)1
cultigen a cultivated plant species with no known wild ancestor
materia medica an encyclopedic treatise of medicinal materials obtained from plants, animals,
and minerals
pharmacopeia a treatise on medicinal drugs and their formulas
phytonym a plant name (non-taxonomic)
taxon taxonomic group or unit, especially when hierarchic rank is not specified2
Wanderwort a word borrowed from one language to another across a broad geographical area,
often as a result of trade or adoption of newly introduced items or cultural
practices3

1 Z. Zhao et al., 2018.

2 A back-formation from “taxonomy.”

3 Merriam-Webster, n.d., Wanderwort.

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S O U RC E A B B R E V I AT I O N S

AHD American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

BCGM Bencao Gangmu
BHL Biodiversity Heritage Library
BNC British National Corpus
CAD Chicago Assyrian Dictionary
CBETA Chinese Buddhist Electronic Texts Association
CTP Chinese Text Project
EHBC English Historical Book Collection
EI2 Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition
EIr Encyclopedia Iranica
EJ Encyclopedia Judaica
FAOSTAT UN Food and Agriculture Organization Statistical Database
FoC Flora of China
GBIF Global Biodiversity Information Facility
IPNI International Plant Names Index
KSUCCA King Saud University Corpus of Classical Arabic
LSJ Liddel-Scott-Jones: A Greek-English Lexicon
MC Middle Chinese
MW Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary
NFCM Nanfang Caomu Zhuang
NS Nişanyan Sözlük
OC Old Chinese
OED Oxford English Dictionary
PIE Proto-Indo-European
POWO Plants of the World Online
PWN Princeton WordNet
SCB Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian
SEAlang Southeast Asian Languages Library

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SkE Sketch Engine

SS Scripta Sinica
TCM Traditional Chinese Medicine
TLFi Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé
TPGJ Taiping Guangji
TPL The Plant List
WALS The World Atlas of Language Structures
WFO World Flora Online
WOLD The World Loanword Database
YYZZ Youyang Zazu

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S Y M B O L S A N D N O TAT I O N

* reconstructed form
< developed from
> developed into
<? uncertain development
† obsolete
fragrance italic: lexical item, a word or phrase
[fragrance] square brackets: gloss, literal meaning
‘fragrance’ single quotation marks: meaning, sense
FRAGRANCE small capitals: a concept

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1. INTRODUCTION

While reading about the different spices that nature has given us, I came across a quite unusual example.
There is a small aromatic tree native to the islands of the Greater Antilles on the Caribbean that produces
little berries. The indigenous people used this tree and its fruit in various ways in different stages of food
preparation, as a medicine, and as a flavoring agent. It is still an important crop today, growing only in
Central America. The wood is used to smoke meat, and the leaves are added to stews and rum for their
aroma (similarly to the bay leaf in Europe), but most importantly, the dried berries are used as a spice.
Outside this region it is not a particularly well-known ingredient; still, many cuisines have used it in
various ways since its diffusion started in the seventeenth century. In English, we call it Jamaica pepper
or pimento, but it is mostly known today as allspice. In Arabic, it is fulful ifranjī literally [Frankish pepper],
meaning ‘European pepper’ or bahār ḥulw [sweet spice], and in Chinese it is mostly known as
duoxiangguo [many-spice/fragrant-fruit]. Hungarians call it szegfűbors [clove-pepper], and in Turkish it
is yenibahar [new-spice]. In Iceland it is known as the “handy spice,” allrahanda, and the Polish call it
ziele angielskie [English herb]. What a variety! The tree itself is also called Caribbean laurel. However,
this plant is not a laurel, not a pepper, nor a chili, and it is not an herb. What is this versatile spice exactly?
How did it come about that this material has so many quite different names? And what is the explanation
and motivation behind these names; what is their story? This paper is about answering such questions
and telling the story of spices through examining their nomenclature.

1 .1 SIGNIFICANCE

Understanding the language of spices is the key to opening the door to this world: a door that leads to
the realization that our words and material culture—are deeply interconnected, and that they have been
so for thousands of years. I will try to demonstrate this by introducing these fascinating substances from
a new perspective, that of language.
It is trendy nowadays to talk about foodways, a term that refers to “the eating habits and culinary
practices of people, regions, or historical periods” (L. H. Allen et al., 2013, vol. 2, p. 289). Food history, a
relatively young interdisciplinary academic field, is starting to gain traction as well. The study of the
connections between language and food, however, is one of the most interesting examples of

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contemporary humanities research I have come across (see, e.g., Jurafsky, 2014). There is a segment of
this topic—the spice domain—that encompasses products that have had profound effects on human
imagination, culture, and history. Although somewhat overshadowed by questions of nutrition, modern
scientific research on spices was never a fringe field. It is enough to look at the many pharmacological
studies that investigate the chemistry of these materials to realize that people are quite as much
interested in their effects on health—just as they were thousands of years ago—as their taste and aroma.
Spices were never a necessity to human survival but instead commanded intense desire and
effort. As such, they constitute an enthralling phenomenon throughout human history, one that can be
studied from many angles. Research on spices has been embraced by several historians, many botanists,
and countless culinary enthusiasts. Scholars realized the cultural significance of these products and their
trade early on, and, by following the paths of these materials, tried to uncover the stories they can tell us
about cultural contact and exchange. Spices in the past conveyed the mystery and riches of faraway lands,
were considered remedies for sickness, and seemed the ultimate gifts of paradise. While may be that
spices are not vital for human life, sustenance by itself is merely enough to maintain life, not to live it to
the fullest. Spices today represent the excitement, the joy and vigor, of existence: to spice up your life is
to enliven it!

1 .2 ORIGINALITY

This paper aims to systematically investigate spice names and their related terminology, including spices
that were used (or are still being used) medicinally, as incense, or as perfume. Aromatics that were at
some point considered spices have been traded and transported across long distances since antiquity,
and the most coveted ones have slowly been dispersed throughout the globe. Spices and the spice
domain are usually discussed within the broad disciplines of history, botany, chemistry, and gastronomy,
each concerned with a different aspect of these materials. To the best of my knowledge, there is no
academic work that makes the field of linguistics the lens through which the spice kingdom as a whole
is viewed. Accordingly, I believe this project offers a unique contribution to our linguistic knowledge of
the spice domain.
But why should anyone care about spices and their names? The most important reason may be
that exploring the names of the products of the spice trade, traveling as it did on such vast networks of

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trade routes as the Silk Road (with its small volume of goods) and its nautical counterpart, the Maritime
Silk Road (with its larger volume), helps us to map and better understand linguistic contact and cultural
exchange. These ever-expanding trade networks, first regional, later connecting East and West, were a
precursor to today’s globalized, interconnected world. One of their most lucrative products was dried
plant-matter. These aromatic substances were lightweight, easy to transport, and resistant to spoilage.
They were highly valued for their fragrant and pungent properties and for their reputed—both putative
and real—benefits for the human body and soul. The role of exotic and rare spices in rituals, medicine,
and, later, cuisine made them sought after, and the spice business inspired people to trade, travel, explore,
and wage wars.
Spices are also important in world history because they were directly responsible for discoveries,
colonization, and the birth of capitalism. We know a great deal about the nature of spices thanks to
botanists and naturalists, their medicinal effects thanks to pharmacists and chemists, and their uses and
culinary values thanks to experts in gastronomy. There is also a vast literature on the spread and economy
of spices thanks to researchers of history, but the careful study of their names is often neglected. The
meticulous study of spice terminology is important, because the words can tell us a huge amount about
a material’s origin and journey, even providing time depth in situations where textual or archeological
evidence is not available. This work grew out of my fascination with the etymologies and global
dispersion of spice terms. I hope this attempt to collect them in one study proves useful to others.

1 .3 P R O B L E M S TAT E M E N T

The absence of proper research regarding spice terminology has resulted in a lack of understanding, and
thus a decline of trust in the (secondary) literature. Authors often give misguided and contradicting
information regarding the sources of spice names, or simply erroneously speculate on their meanings
and origins. It sometimes appears that no two authors use the same set of names when discussing a spice.
This is not perhaps a problem in itself, but the disjunction leads to misunderstandings in the case of
lesser known or exotic items. There is also a great deal of confusion on the relationship between names
and identities in the literature, especially in lay areas aimed at the general public, such as popular
histories or guidebooks. The reasons for this are several.
First, experts on herbs, spices, and other aromatics are chiefly botanists, food industry

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professionals, chemists, chefs and food writers, merchants, and historians. Most people conducting
research related to spices focus on aspects other than the names of the products; from plant morphology,
to chemical composition and pharmacological effects, to social and cultural histories, their symbolism
in literature, not to mention the myriad writings on how to buy, store, mix, and use spices in the creative
recipes provided by the handy spice encyclopedias tailored for gastro-enthusiasts. Relatively few
linguists have devoted their time and attention to tracing spice origins and even fewer to compiling them.
In other words, the topic of spices requires a highly multidisciplinary expertise, and when a plant
taxonomist writes about linguistics, or a culinary writer approaches history, mistakes are inevitable.
Secondly, there is neither a reference work nor an agreed-upon inventory of spice names for the
multitude of spices that exist, and their many names in various languages (and in different time periods),
never mind a complete list of every spice. Truthfully, it seems almost impossible there could be one, or at
least it seems quite a daunting task to embark on. Although the internet nowadays is full of compact
guides and indices assembled by people who are fascinated with spices and their colorful uses, listing
their names in many languages, these are not always trustworthy, and they often cite no sources. Similarly,
in blogs and articles these names are more often than not dubious, and their use almost always requires
fact-checking, as many are just permutations of historically inaccurate anecdotes and origin stories.
Recently I have found spice lists that are clearly just a dump of computer-generated information floating
around on the internet using web scraping and machine translation: these lists are highly inaccurate and
should be avoided. I will further elaborate on the inaccuracies regarding names and etymologies found
in the spice literature in the literature review in the next chapter.
There is still no comprehensive treatise on spice terms in academia even today, and no database
that focuses on, lists, explains, analyzes, clarifies, traces, or compares spice names. Accordingly there is
an obvious need for a standard work for others to turn to, and I hope that this paper can lay the
foundation for future efforts to achieve this.
This is not to say that there has been no work done on spice terminology: in fact, there are a
number of high quality writings from philologists, linguists, and historians well versed in one or more
relevant linguistic and cultural areas. The problem is that this kind of research requires a highly
specialized knowledge, and as a result the information already out there is sporadic, inaccessible, and
grossly unorganized. Key pieces of information are often hidden in the pages of books on traditional

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philology and material culture, literary critique, economic history, and even the botany, medicine, and
archaeology of a given region. This is not even to mention the many old works that are the primary
sources for the aforementioned publications. Consequently, since little effort has been made to collate
the data, there is a chasm between the critically researched reliable information and what the end user—
whether it is a fellow researcher or a spice zealot—can easily access.

1 .4 AIMS

The original goal in the beginning of this work was to gather and augment the existing information about
spice names and their origins, and to track their diffusion on spatial and temporal trajectories. This effort
constitutes the core of this paper, and I hope to achieve it by combing through the existing literature,
collecting the names of spices, amending the gaps, and correcting possible errors along the way. My hope
is that the results of this effort will give birth to a carefully researched compendium of spice
nomenclature, grounded in philology and linguistics, but with the awareness of what spices are to botany,
and what their role has been in history. Chapter 4, The Spices, presents parts of this process, displays the
data seriatim, and introduces some of the spices.
My procedure begins by manifesting a dataset of spice names, with complete lexicographical
annotation including etymological information and attestation dates. This in turn allows me to trace the
words and track the linguistic diffusion of spices through space and time, which then can be discussed
alongside the physical diffusion of the materials. The discussion of the spread of the spices becomes the
basis for examining the implications of linguistic and cultural contact and exchange, and this effort
makes up chapter 5, The Diffusion of Spices. This chapter calls attention to the concept of Wanderwörter,
“wandering loanwords,” a phenomenon known in the field of historical linguistics related to the topic of
borrowing and material culture. The goal of this chapter is to map the diffusion of the terms of the spice
domain, as informed by etymological research.
The data of spice names are also the basis of a linguistic analysis, focusing on the characteristics
of terms, and the methods and strategies languages use to name spices, presented here in chapter 6, “The
Language of Spices.” This part includes a deep dive into how spice names are devised or created, how
prototype items beget prototype words to generate new names for novel items of trade, and what the
mechanisms and motivations of linguistic acculturation and spice name propagation are. The goal of

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this section is to shed light on how spice names are born and how they operate on a linguistic-cognitive
level, what type of information they convey, and what sensory modalities they tie into.

1 .5 DEFINITIONS

The first step is to clarify what falls under the term spice. According to the Oxford English Dictionary
(OED), the definition of spice is as follows: “One or other of various strongly flavored or aromatic
substances of vegetable origin, obtained from tropical plants, commonly used as condiments or
employment for other purposes on account of their fragrance and preservative qualities.”4 Similarly, the
first meaning for spice as a noun in Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (MW) is “any of various
aromatic vegetable products (such as pepper or nutmeg) used to season or flavor foods.”5 The American
Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD) adds examples: “Any of various pungent, aromatic
plant substances, such as cinnamon or nutmeg, used to flavor foods or beverages.”6 The Wikipedia entry
on Spice covers slightly more territory, hinting at which plant parts are frequently used as spices and
mentioning their food-coloring properties, while also—very appropriately—venturing beyond the
culinary stance of usual dictionary definitions to state that “spices are sometimes used in medicine,
religious rituals, cosmetics or perfume production.” 7 This notion is much more important than the
limitation ‘’‘sometimes” could imply, as we will see; before modern times, spices were much more
important for their medicinal properties.
There is no universal definition of what a spice is; botany, pharmacology, gastronomy, and history
all have different perspectives. However, the idea about “spices” that the reader currently has in mind is
bound to be a culinary one. Some authors try to give a definition according to plant morphology: Czarra
(2009, p. 9) writes about “an aromatic part of a tropical plant” and goes on to mention bark, flower, root,
and seed. J. Turner (2004, p. xix) adds gum and resin, fruit, and stigma to this listing. For a full picture,
we must complement it further with other aspects, as spices can come in many forms: dried tree barks

4 OUP, n.d., spice.

5 MW, n.d., spice.

6 AHD, 2022, spice.

7 Wikipedia, 2022.

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(cinnamon); twigs (cassia twigs); flower buds (cloves); stigmas or styles (saffron); fruits (pepper, chili);
fruit walls or pericarps (star anise, Sichuan pepper); berries (allspice, juniper); seeds (nutmeg, coriander);
seed coverings or arils (mace); seed pods (cardamom, vanilla); and roots and rhizomes (ginger, turmeric).
Technically, every dried part of a plant can be referred to as spice, except the leaves. The green leaves—
fresh or dried, but mostly used fresh—are considered herbs, and they are used for similar purposes to
spices nowadays: flavoring, seasoning, garnishing. Dried leaves of herbs, such as basil, oregano, and
thyme, can be categorized as “spice herbs”(see vanWyk 2014).
The category of herbs can itself be problematic, because there exists a botanical definition as
well as a culinary one, and the literature often confuses the two. Botanically, an herb is an annual,
biennial, or perennial plant that has a soft stem (never becoming woody) and that dies after flowering.8
A culinary herb is an herb of which the fresh leaves are used in food preparation, as opposed to other,
dried plant parts. Medicinal herbs are those that are primarily consumed for their medicinal properties.
O’Connell (2016, pp. 9, 16) backs this view in his informative compendium, but he also cites Rosengarten
(1969/1973, p. 16), who maintained that it is “extremely difficult to determine where a spice ends and a
herb begins.” According to him, culinary herbs are just one group of spices. Along these lines, the
Encyclopedia Britannica (2022) for example treats herbs and spices in a single entry.
The above distinction—that herbs are the greens. and spices are every other (dried) part of a
plant—is essentially nonsense to a botanist, since it echoes the needs of a chef. We can give examples
for both spice and herb from the same species: coriander seeds and coriander leaves (also called cilantro
or Chinese parsley in the United States.) are both from the plant Coriandrum sativum. Or see an even
more elaborate example for culinary categorization: mustard (Brassica juncea, brown mustard). Mustard
in Europe is mostly known in the form of a creamy yellow paste, often very pungent, and it is called a
condiment. This condiment is made from the mustard seeds, which are considered to be the spice. Some
regions enjoy mustard greens in their salads, and therefore we can categorize it as a (salad) herb. The
roots of the mustard plant are popularly fermented in Chinese cuisine to make pickles, known as 榨菜
zha cai [to press, extract juices, salted vegetable; vegetable dish]. Another often-mentioned difference is
that herbs are soft stemmed—as I just mentioned—and die at the end of the growing season, in contrast

8 OUP, n.d., herb.

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to woody, spice-yielding trees or shrubs. This, on the other hand, is a botanical definition, and not very
useful for somebody active in the culinary arts (G. Allen, 2012, p. 10). Moreover, most plants we consider
herbs grow in temperate climates, while spices tend to grow in tropical regions (J. Turner, 2004), a further
classification, here on an ecological basis. Herbs can also be divided into culinary and medicinal herbs,
and in both cases the leafy, green parts of the foliage are used for their aroma and flavor, and supposed
health benefits, respectively, but this division is a modern afterthought, not applicable to past times. In
short, defining spices and herbs is difficult because the definitions vary by discipline, depending on the
needs of the expert: the gardener, the herbalist, or the chef.
Just as herb has two main definition types—botanical and culinary—the term spice also has two
definitions: culinary and historical. In the present study, I focus on dried, plant-based aromatic
commodities that traveled long distances due to trade and that were at certain points in history
considered a desired commodity or even a luxury. This is basically the definition of the historian, where
the implications of climate and remoteness translated as value. Spices were difficult to obtain, and thus
were often instantly expensive. Long-distance transportation was possible because the plant products
were hauled across deserts and oceans in a dried form, making them lightweight and less susceptible to
rot. Culinary and medicinal herbs had their value in their freshness and thus were not ideal products for
trade; they spread through naturalization and transplantation and were generally available locally,
commanding much more modest sums of money. As against herbs, spices were more versatile in their
applications; they were used as medicine due to their (real, putative, or exaggerated) health benefits, as
incense and perfume due to their aroma, as coloring pigments, as flavoring agents, and even as spiritual
offerings. In connection with Portugal’s role in the fifteenth–sixteenth-century European spice trade,
Halikowski Smith (2001) distinguishes four categories of spices along the same lines: spices as pharmacia;
spices as aromata; spices as pigmenta; spices as condimenta. Historically speaking, anything rare and
aromatic can be considered a spice, including incense for burning, coffee in its early days, chocolate,
perfumes, or even exotic fruits such as pomegranates: anything ‘special’ (even if today nobody would
agree).
This is well observed in the origins of the English name: the word spice, via Old French espice,
coming from Late Latin speciēs (plural) ‘spices, goods, wares’ with the original meaning in Classical Latin
being ‘kind, sort.’ English species and special are obvious cognates of the same Latin etymon: speciō,

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which referred to anything observable: a sight, ‘spectacle’ (cf. inspect), and also anything extraordinary,
a specific kind of item (Glare, 1982/2012, pp. 1983–84). This implies that in different periods, the meaning
of the term spice covered different substances, based on what products were considered special,
desirable, and difficult to obtain; the definition constantly changed. From this point on, whenever spices
are mentioned, I refer to this broader definition, using spice as an umbrella term for any historical exotica.
These definitions and the differences between the terms spice, incense, herb, condiment, etc., will be
explored in detail, along with the shift in meaning accorded to the term spices (Section 2.1.5).

1 .6 SCOPE

The scope of this study can be delimited by three factors: the subjects under study (i.e., the spices); the
languages involved; and the time frames covered.

1.6.1 The Set of Spices

Due to the lack of a single definition and the vast number of both popular and rare materials, the lists of
herbs and spices are as many as the books written on them. Every compiler—cook, linguist, or
historian—comes up with his or her own list: there is no standard approach. Czarra (2009) discusses
only five premier spices, ‘the foremost five’ as he calls them, Nabhan (2014) works with twenty-six ‘spice
boxes’, to use his terminology, and Rosengarten (1969/1973) mentions forty-one “of the world’s most
popular spices.” Van Wyk (2014) in his reference guide introduces 120, and the glossary of spice names in
Dalby (2000) contains more than 200 entries. The Encyclopedia Britannica simply lists seventy
(Petruzzello, 2021).
The attempt to collect and describe spices in their entirety is not a modern phenomenon: people
tried to collect and assemble knowledge of aromatic and medicinal plants and products ever since the
day we started to use them, proof being the countless herbariums,9 materia medicas, and pharmacopeias
of the last two millennia, e.g., the De Materia Medica of Dioscorides. Besides the focus on their medicinal
properties, spices were listed as commodities of trade. We know for example that for reasons motivated

9 A collection of preserved plants with descriptions and botanical analysis.

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by customs tariffs and taxation, Roman ports, such as Berenike,10 had inventories of speciēs that required
special attention (Parthasarathi, 2015), and, as a later example, we can mention an Italian merchant’s
book on trade from the fourteenth century, which contains 188 “spices” (Pegolotti, ca. 1335–1343/1936, pp.
411–435). Modern considerations and regulations related to commercial shipping can also be consulted,
the Harmonized System (HS)4 tariff codes (0901-0910) used in international trade differentiates around
twenty different spices, the designations mostly driven by practical reasons related to storage and
transportation requirements.11
A comprehensive list of the world’s spices is likely to be extremely long, and collecting them all
in this short work surely an unattainable aim, so I must limit my scope, selecting a small set of spices
from the many. I have studied how others perform this selection and concluded that, unless we include
every known item, there is no scientifically sound way of selecting just a few, as this will always reflect
the compiler’s knowledge, interest, and cultural background. I have planned to include a number of
spices, as many as needed for an attempt to find patterns in diffusion and language use, keeping in mind
the expected variations per cuisine and cultural sphere.
As aromatic plant products are far greater in number than initially expected (in the hundreds),
I had to delimit my study by selecting a small set of spices as the subjects of this study. One of the clearly
intended future goals of this project is to include all known historically important aromatic products,
but for the sake of time, I had to make some choices, and I have set up a list of criteria. The subjects
under scrutiny shall adhere to the following rubric: (1) a plant-based material, with (2) aromatic or
pungent properties, (3) traded over great distances, (4) known and used since pre-modern times, and
preferably (5) once of significant value. The more criteria the substance has fulfilled, the higher it
climbed on my list as I assembled a set of spices while reading through the literature. Most importantly,
I tried to include globally popular spices that people are likely to be familiar with. In the end, I finalized
my set such that it includes twenty-four spices, which you can see in Table 1.1.

10 For the history of the ancient Indo-Mediterranean trade through archeological research in the port of Berenike, see
Sidebotham (2011).

11 The Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System is a standardized international system to classify globally
traded products (https://www.freightos.com/freight-resources/harmonized-system-code-finder-hs-code-lookup/).

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Table 1.1 The set of twenty-four spices included in this paper, with scientific names of the source plant,
names in English, Chinese, Arabic, and their transliterations

Species English Chinese Translit. Arabic Translit.

Pimenta dioica allspice 多香果 duōxiāngguǒ ‫ فلفل إفرنجي‬filfil ifranjī
Pimpinella anisum anise 茴芹 huíqín ‫ ينسون‬yansūn
Ferula assa-foetida et al. asafoetida 阿魏 āwèi ‫ حلتیت‬ḥiltīt
Carumcarvi caraway 葛縷子 gělǚzi ‫ كراويا‬karāwiyā
Elettaria cardamomum cardamom 荳蔻 dòukòu ‫ هال‬hāl
Cinnamomumcassia cassia 肉桂 ròuguì ‫ سليخة‬salīkha
Capsicumannuum et al. chile 辣椒 làjiāo ‫ فلفل حار‬fulful hārr
Cinnamomumverum cinnamon 錫蘭肉桂 xīlánròuguì ‫ قرفة‬qirfa
Syzygiumaromaticum clove 丁香 dīngxiāng ‫ قرنفل‬qaranful
Coriandrumsativum coriander 芫荽 yánsui ‫ كزبرة‬kuzbara
Cuminumcyminum cumin 孜然 zīrán ‫ كمون‬kammūn
Anethumgraveolens dill 蒔蘿 shíluó ‫ شبت‬shibitt
Foeniculumvulgare fennel 茴香 huíxiāng ‫ شمر‬shamar
Trigonella foenum-graecum fenugreek 胡蘆巴 húlúbā ‫ حلبة‬ḥulba
Zingiber officinale ginger 薑 jiāng ‫ زنجبيل‬zanjabīl
Piper longum long pepper 蓽撥 bìbō ‫ دار فلفل‬dār filfil
Myristica fragrans mace 肉荳蔻皮 ròudòukòupí ‫ بسباسة‬basbāsa
Myristica fragrans nutmeg 肉荳蔻 ròudòukòu ‫ جوز الطيب‬jawz al-ṭīb
Piper nigrum pepper 胡椒 hújiāo ‫ فلفل‬filfil, fulful
Crocus sativus saffron 番紅花 fānhónghuā ‫ زعفران‬zaʿfarān
Zanthoxylumspp. Sichuan pepper 花椒 huājiāo ‫ فلفل سيتشوان‬filfil sītshuwān
Illiciumverum star anise 八角 bājiǎo ‫ ينسون نجمي‬yansūn najmī
Curcuma longa turmeric 薑黃 jiānghuáng ‫ كركم‬kurkum
Vanilla planifolia vanilla 香草 xiāngcǎo ‫ فانيليا‬fānīliyā

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In this work I have followed the criteria laid out above and included the most prominent spices,
for example, black pepper (Piper nigrum). Pepper is the world’s most traded and consumed spice,
followed by cinnamon (Senaratne & Pathirana, 2020, p. 16). In many parts of the world, pepper is also
the prototype spice. In order of popularity, I have worked downward, considering at the top the most
consumed and most traded spices. The current set of twenty-four, in my opinion, is enough to grasp the
big picture, as it includes a large variety of spices from relatively12 diverse areas. In the future I hope to
extend this project and bring more aromatic materials into the fold.
The scientific literature usually categorizes spices by their taxonomy as governed by rules from
the discipline of botany. Although above I mentioned standards of international trade and shipping that
use different categorizations, I am discussing spices from a historical perspective, and I should
emphasize that this is a linguistic study, and therefore the basis of comparison will be the spices as
conceptual categories revolving around words, and the spice names themselves. Strict botanical or other
categorizations must be only secondary. What I mean by this is that, even if the botanical reality tells us
that chile peppers are in fact several different species and varieties on a taxonomic ladder, I will treat
them as a unit according to the broad sense the term chili pepper conveys. Therefore, the close
organizational units are words, meanings, and concepts. I will clear this up further in the chapter on
methodology. Now that we have identified the subjects in our scope, let us move on to the languages to
be included, and the time frames to be covered.

1.6.2 The Languages

To make this study more revealing culturally, I will look at three languages, namely English, Arabic, and
Chinese. All from distant language families, with very distinct features, these languages represent three
very different cultural spheres that all participated in the spice trade in different historical periods and
were at times highly influential players. Investigating spices and spice names through the lens of these
languages offers us an opportunity to take a step back from the usual Eurocentric viewpoint and observe
the spice domain from a more global, intercultural perspective, investigating it via three pillars of human
high culture as equals. Not only did these civilizations have interactions with each other, but their
representative languages—rich in literary traditions—have left a mark on many of the world’s other

12 Keeping in mind that almost all spices around the world originate from regions with tropical or subtropical climates.

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languages, through migration, trade, cultural and religious influence, colonization, and imperialism. By
tracing the words’ histories up until contemporary English, Arabic, and Chinese, I must touch on the
many other languages that have played a role in transmitting the words as source and donor languages
in the spice domain, such as Latin, Persian, Sogdian, Sanskrit, and many more. Focusing on the three
languages however, will allow us to take a comparative approach, but without overwhelming ourselves
with the many related languages that would make for a scope too wide, and beyond my abilities.

1.6.3 The Time Frame

Lastly, a few words on defining the time periods to be covered: I will start the linguistic investigation
using a set of contemporary names in the three languages mentioned above, and I will trace the histories
of the words to the periods where the etymologies lead me. Consequently, the historical periods that saw
the greatest exchange and knowledge production about spices will be treated with a much greater
emphasis than others.
These significant eras for example include the seventh to twelfth centuries, a period significant
from both the Arabic and Chinese points of view. In the Middle East we have seen the rapid expansion
of Islamic empires in the form of the Umayyad (661–750) and Abbasid caliphates (750–1258), stretching
over vast swathes of land from North Africa, on the west, to the easternmost extremities of Persia. In the
Far East, the Tang dynasty (618–907) illustrated the peak of classical Chinese civilization—usually
regarded as open and cosmopolitan—controlling the regions on the eastern terminus of the Silk Road,
followed by the similarly important Song dynasty (960–1279). In both cases, this time is regarded as an
important cultural and economic golden age: poetry, literature, science, and trade flourished. Important
materia medicas are extant from the Tang era (J.-N. Wu, 2005), and Islamic authors were occupied
producing heavy tomes on geography, alchemy, medicine, philosophy, and other topics (Meri 2006, p.
131). During the eighth century both powers reached each other’s spheres of influence in Central Asia,
and at 751 the Battle of Talas—ending with the victory of the Arab forces and their Tibetan allies—
affected the fate of the region for centuries.
In the case of English, the appropriate, matching historical period would be that of Old English;
however, this earliest recorded period is not abundant in spice-related terms, although attested
wandering loanwords include pepper, copper, gem, and mint (Wollman, 1993). In the case of English, the
most relevant historical period would correspond to that from Middle English (ca. 1150–1450) to Early

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Modern English (late fifteenth to late seventeenth century), where the dichotomy in the domain of spice
terminology between contemporary and historic times is still observable. This is the historical period
marked by England’s slow emergence from the ragged periphery of Europe during the Age of Discovery,
into a global superpower, thanks to its advances toward maritime supremacy, the zenith 13 of which
begins with the foundation of the East India Company in 1600, and later culminates in the expansion of
the British Empire.

1 .7 CONTRIBUTION

The main contribution of this paper is intended to be a working database of spices and their
accompanying names that can serve as a basis for further study in historical linguistics, typology, and
more. Spices and aromatic products with varying importance and relevance in different places and in
different times are essentially endless, so there is always room (and need) to expand. This project treats
these materials as unique witnesses of cultural interaction and tracks their physical and linguistic
diffusion. Collecting the Wanderwörter of the spice domain and examining their linguistic history makes
an interesting window through which to look at early human contact and exchange, and the
dissemination of plants, materials, words, and knowledge.
Furthermore, a look into the role of spices’ highly sensory nature can be an exciting point of
study regarding human cognition and language, and especially our attitude toward naming and
conceptualizing novel substances.

1 .8 L AYO U T

Chapter 2, Background, reviews the literature, further explains the research gap, and introduces the
theoretical framework; chapter 3, Methodology, introduces the research design principles, its challenges,
and the data collection process regarding spices, names, and etymologies. Chapter 4, The Spices,
introduces a few spices in more detail, one by one, including their uses, botany, and history besides their
names. The empirical chapters, 5 and 6, present the diffusion of spices and the language of spices,
respectively. The work ends with a short conclusion detailing limitations and future plans.

13 From Arabic samt ‘astronomical path.’

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2. BACKGROUND

Knowledge about and familiarity with spices varies greatly from person to person. Someone might live
a life of actively pursuing, disseminating, and creating knowledge about spices, while someone else
might go through life without caring or knowing a thing about them. However, it is probable both types
of people would use and consume similar amounts of these substances, depending on which culinary
or medicinal tradition they were born into. Spices are various, mainly plant-based substances that have
played an essential role in human civilization for millennia. As I mentioned earlier, the assumed roles
can be numerous: culinary, medicinal, cosmetic, and ritualistic, and different cultures attach varying
degrees of importance to different products. In this chapter, I will explore the different fields that have
generated information about spices, review and evaluate the existing literature, and present the available
and appropriate sources for investigating these materials relevant to this project. I will also introduce
the theoretical framework on which this paper and its methodology build.

2.1 L I T E R AT U R E R E V I E W

2.1.1 On Spices
When we hear the word spice, our imagination rushes through far-flung tropical islands, busy seaports,
lush jungles, and arid deserts; it invokes the sight of massive ocean-going ships, oriental traders, and
camel caravans. A quick internet image search on the “spice trade” shows us antique maps in sepia and
neatly arranged Moroccan spice markets in eclectic colors. We can almost smell the word spice. These
envisioned, heavily stereotypical landscapes go hand in hand with stories of exotic peoples, fantastic
creatures, prized commodities, tales of exploration, and much less glorious accounts of colonization.
What I described here is an exclusively Westernized viewpoint. While most of the images in our minds
are distorted under the influence of romantic orientalist paintings, and tales of triumphant discoveries
retold over generations, the essence of the image is very true, and much more gruesome. Arguably, the
peoples living in the native habitats of a once overvalued plant species have different experiences etched
in their collective memories. One could argue that Europeans imported spice, but often exported horrors.
The spice trade and its romantic imagination gave birth to many books, from historical non-fiction based
on influential characters, such as Nathaniel’s Nutmeg (Milton, 1999), to popular histories, such as The

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Spice Route (Keay, 2006), and more popular science accounts, such as Fruit From the Sands: The Silk Road
Origins of the Foods We Eat from paleo-ethnobotanist Spengler (2019a).
Today, spices are mostly discussed from a culinary point of view. The volumes of cookbooks and
spice and herb companions are almost infinite. Gastronomy professionals, chefs, food writers, and
hobbyists all participate in an endeavor to introduce spices to us in a fashionable manner, creating
references for home cooks and health enthusiasts. Many authors attempt an overarching collection,
presented in encyclopedic directories (Craze, 1997; Farrell, 1985; Herman, 2015; Lakshmi, 2016; Norman,
2002/2015; O’Connell, 2016; Opara & Chohan, 2021).
On a more scientific note, we find authors from the plant sciences, such as plant taxonomist and
ethnobotanist van Wyk (2014), who delivers an excellent compendium titled Culinary Herbs and Spices
of the World, in which he introduces dozens of aromatic plants, with a clear explanation of their uses
and categorization. In her Food Plants of China S.-Y. Hu (2005) describes hundreds of edible plants
relevant to Chinese eating habits, with the precision of a true botanist. Agricultural ecologist and ethno-
biologist Nabhan (2014) takes the reader on a “spice odyssey,” with his illuminating Cumin, Camels, and
Caravans, discussing the materials in chronological steps of global trade—on the incense trail, the Silk
Road, and the spice trade.
Beyond general and introductory histories of spices, such as those offered by J. Turner in his Spice:
The History of a Temptation (2004) or Czarra in Spices: A Global History (2009), most historians and
philologists approach the topic in depth, from their own areas of expertise. Culinary historian Krondl
(2007) compartmentalized the story of spices, and writes about Venice, Lisbon, and Amsterdam, “the
three great cities of spice” in his The Taste of Conquest and presents the story of spices through the vying
eyes of European powers. Spices in Greek mythology are explored in The Gardens of Adonis by an expert
on Ancient Greece, Detienne (1994), while Schivelbusch (1992), a cultural historian, discovers the social
history of spices, stimulants, and intoxicants in his Tastes of Paradise. Freedman (2008), a historian and
expert on medieval cuisine, in his book Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination explores how
the European fascination with spices fueled the quest for new lands and colonial expansion. The initial
voyages to America by Columbus, Pizarro, and others were motivated by the search for spices, and the
mirage of La Canela, a legendary valley abundant in cinnamon, equally promising to that of gold in El
Dorado (Dalby, 2001). One of the most valuable works for us is Dalby’s Dangerous Tastes: The Story of

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Spices (2000). Andrew Dalby is a linguist and historian, and besides Latin and Greek he has command
of other languages, such as Sanskrit and Burmese, which allows him to present the topic of spices with
the expertise of a truly versatile philologist and convey authentic scholarly information on spice names
bridging East and West. A thought-provoking volume titled The Poetics of Spice by Morton (2006) is a
literary critical study that discusses how spices were represented in Romantic- and Victorian-era English
literature, and how the topic connects to romantic tropes; ideologies, such as consumerism, capitalism;
and ideas, such as abstinence and luxury. “Spice is a complex and contradictory marker: of figure and
ground, sign and referent, species and genus; of love and death, epithalamium and epitaph, sacred and
profane, medicine and poison, Orient and Occident; and of the traffic between these terms” (Morton,
2006, p. 9).
Looking beyond holistic, comprehensive tomes on the history of spices that attempt to gather
all of them into a single book, some commodities have already been explored thoroughly in a more
concentrated approach. The history of salt (Kurlansky, 2002), tea (Mair & Hoh, 2009), pepper (Shaffer,
2013), and vanilla (Rain, 2004) are worth mentioning, and treatises on other popular substances of trade
(chocolate, sugar, tobacco, etc.) are abundantly available. Even more outstanding are the works that
focus their investigation on a specific area, whether it is the “cultural biography” of the chile pepper in
China (Dott, 2020)—retelling an unquestionably influential incorporation of a new item into a diet—
or the allure of musk and perfume in the Islamic tradition (King, 2007). These works contain valuable
linguistic information as well, regarding the origins and spread of the names of spices, and they help us
to investigate their spread and diffusion.
Studies on specific spices are one of the most important sources for this discussion, and they are
highly related to this project; examples are the studies on the loanword status of ginger (Ross, 1952), on
the diffusion of chile (Wright, 2007), on the identity and etymology of Sichuan pepper (Austin & Felger,
2008), and on the “trade-language origin” of turmeric (Guthrie, 2009). Recent advances regarding the
name and identity of cinnamon and cassia in ancient vs. modern times published by Haw (2017), and
the Eurasian itinerary of asafoetida (Leung & Chen, 2019) are pieces of research crucial to tracing the
products accurately. These and similar types of research were highly influential in the preparation of this
thesis.
For an overview about the concept, function, and uses of spices in the classical Islamic periods,

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please refer to Dietrich (2004a); for the same in a Chinese cultural and historical context, please see S.-
Y. Hu (2005, pp. 147–153), and Yan and Zhang (2006).

2.1.2 On Food and Foodways

Literature on gastronomy and the culinary sciences is plentiful, but high-quality scholarly works are
fewer. Reference works include Davidson’s The Oxford Companion to Food (2014) and Katz’s Encyclopedia
of Food and Culture (2003), and other key publications include Toussaint-Samat (2009)’s A History of
Food. Remarkable contributions to ancient and medieval culinary history were made by Dalby, focusing
on the cuisines of Rome, Greece, and Byzantium (Dalby, 1996, 2003, 2010; Dalby & Grainger, 1996)
In a Chinese context the definitive work is still Chang’s Food in Chinese Culture (1977), while in
the Islamic tradition, medieval cuisine and recipes are explored in detail by Zaouali (2007). A few works
on the culinary history of the Middle East are also results of great scholarship, including the translation
of Nawal Nasrallah, who made a tenth-century Baghdadi cookbook accessible for us in the Annals of the
Caliphs’ Kitchens (Ibn Sayyār al-Warrāq, 2007), and Lewicka (2011) who introduced us to Food and
Foodways of Medieval Cairenes.

2.1.3 On Trade
I must point out that spices are mostly explored through their trade. And, as most spices originate in
tropical Asia, our center of attention will be directed toward that continent. The term spice trade loosely
refers to the cross-cultural, economic, and diplomatic ventures of historic kingdoms, empires, and
companies, agglomerating around the Indian Ocean, and other regions such as the Mediterranean, East
Africa, Maritime Southeast Asia, and by land Central Asia. The history of the spice trade is one of its own,
covers hundreds of years, and it is fundamentally connected with the history of globalization. Naturally,
the story of spices is intertwined with trade routes and geopolitical events, involving contact between
peoples, cultures, religions, ideas, and languages. See general works on economic history, such as the
Spice Islands (Burnet, 2011), or on political history The Scents of Eden: A Narrative of the Spice Trade (Corn,
1998). Specific eras and regions related to our topic include the ancient Indo-Roman trade (Cobb, 2019;
Sidebotham, 2011), the medieval Indian Ocean sea trade spanning from the Persian Gulf to China
championed by Arab seafarers (Hourani, 1975; Pearson, 1996), and the Southeast Asian maritime trade
(Chen, 2019; Donkin, 2003; Hall, 2010; Reid, 1988). Young scholars are also doing remarkable work: I

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would like to highlight the thesis of Hoogervorst (2012), who combines historical linguistic and
archaeological approaches in the research of Southeast Asia in the ancient Indian Ocean world.
Southeast Asia was the source for Chinese spices as well: in their 2021 paper, Xu and Sun detail the history
of the spice trade between China and Srivijaya (and other kingdoms of maritime Southeast Asia), its rise
during the Han and Tang, peak during the Song and Yuan, and decline during the Ming and Qing
dynasties. They consult historical records regarding the volume of the trade and the nature of the tribute-
trade relationships. For more on the spice trade from a Chinese perspective (in Chinese), refer to Yan
(2016), Yan and Hui (2007), and Yan and Zhang (2012).
Besides a degree of domestication and long-standing cultivation practices, the abundance of
spices today are a result of long-distance trade and cultural exchange. New advances in the field of
archaeobotany concerning Roman and Islamic times, for example, help us to map the routes of the
materials and trade connections better (see van der Veen & Morales, 2015; van der Veen, 2018).
One surprising fact I have learned from my reading, is that the Silk Road, the trade network of
roads and desert pathways connecting Central Asia with China, did not really feature spices, or at least
not to the extent I previously believed. Valerie Hansen’s well-informed book of 2012, based on unearthed
documents of the region show a trade that is small in volume and much less lavish in terms of luxury
goods than previously thought. Most of the trade covered short distances and whirled around everyday
goods and just a minute amount of exotic perfumes and aromatics, especially musk. Silk often acted as
a currency. The word spice occurs only twice in her book, as she highlights the most traded products in
each period. This is not to say that spices did not exist here at all—we know that many spices were
introduced to China on the silk roads, and that traveling merchants carried pepper and propagated other
spices via their journeys—but rather that the bulk of the spice trade between East and West did not
happen overland.
Many of the contemporary works I mentioned that trace the initial steps of certain spices and
other foodstuff relay accounts from primary sources. For example, Spengler (2019b) writes that the black
pepper of tropical India is first mentioned by Chinese sources in during the Han dynasty (202 BC –9 AD ;
25–220 AD ), in the Hou Hanshu, quoting Laufer (1919, p. 374). I have noticed that in a lot of cases, we can
thank a few giants for the reports, legendary scholars whose research we still use and reference. These
are the people who laid down the groundwork for future studies by their hard work and language skills,

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including Berthold Laufer (1919) and his invaluable Sino-Iranica, which catalogues “Chinese
contributions to the history of civilization in ancient Iran, with special reference to the history of
cultivated plants and products”; and Edward H. Schafer (1985), and The Golden Peaches of Samarkand,
which lists luxury exotica that reached the Tang court, exploring cultural interactions with other regions.
I would also like to mention Isaac Burkill (1935), who recorded every economically important plant and
mineral under the sun of the Malay Peninsula, annotated with local names, traditional knowledge, and
regional historical significance in his monumental A Dictionary of the Economic Products of the Malay
Peninsula. Their command and knowledge in history, sinology, and botany is immeasurable.
In the study of spices, incense, and aromatics through the tools of Semitic philology, I should
mention the recent addition of Amar and Lev’s Arabian Drugs in Early Medieval Mediterranean Medicine
(2017) and Lev and Amar’s Practical Materia Medica of the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean According to
the Cairo Genizah (2008), and we cannot leave out Domestication of Plants in the Old World by plant
geneticist D. Zohary et al. (1988/2012), which supplies a great overview of the agronomic development
of the region, or Duke’s Handbook of Medicinal Plants of the Bible (Duke et al., 2008).

2.1.4 On Chemistry, Medicine, and Healing

Besides history, archaeology, and botany, progress in spice-related research in recent times is
predominantly from the field of medicine. There are uncountable pharmacological—clinical and in
vitro—studies on the effects of various medicinal plants (Boy et al., 2018), and many of them are
motivated by food and nutritional science research, such as the survey by Baker et al. (2013) on the effects
of cooking with and ingesting cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. I will try to keep away from the deep
deliberations of scientific treatises from medical, biochemical, and pharmacological journals as much
as possible, though I will comment on issues related to folk uses and traditional knowledge where
relevant.
I must briefly mention the fields closely knit with the food industry: chemistry and
pharmacology. The authoritative Handbook of Herbs and Spices (Peter, 2012) and The Encyclopedia of
Herbs & Spices (Ravindran, 2017a) are for industry professionals. These works detail the physical and
chemical properties of the materials, and the plants and their products are described in detail. Besides
botanical information, the plants’ chemical compounds and volatile oils are in focus, but general
knowledge about the origins, names, uses, and functions is also presented. The chemistry of spices is an

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interesting topic: scientific and popular books have both been published on it.14 The science behind how
spices work is a fascinating one, and there are especially two questions we should pose, one: “Why are
spices spicy?”, and, two: “Why do humans like spices?”
The answer to the first question is that the pungency we feel—a mild rush of heat or minutes of
tingling lips—is in fact a toxic shield: it is the plant’s evolutionary response to herbivores, bugs, and pests
(J. Turner, 2004, p. 21). However, this is not a crucial component in the organism’s life cycle; these
substances (the volatile oils causing flavor and pungency) are so-called secondary metabolites, in that
they are insignificant to the plant’s biology (Parthasarathy et al., 2008, p. 18). Rather, heat is to the chili
effectively what thorns are to the rose. The spiciness of a spice is a weapon, and while bugs and insects
would run amok from that effect if they were trying to make a snack of the fruit of Myristica fragrans
(the tree of nutmeg and mace), it made humans—quite ironically—sail to the end of the world to find
it. No obstacle was too great to stop mankind’s appetite for fragrant, pungent, and spicy flavors.
In answering the second question, we can expect that if the spiciness of spices has a Darwinian
explanation, the human desire for them should also sound like one. Sherman and Billing (1999) in their
influential, and aptly titled, article “Darwinian gastronomy,” claimed that spices taste good because they
help us fight hostile bacteria and microorganisms responsible for digestive issues such as food poisoning:
they are beneficial for our health. The authors also compared cuisines of the world based on how much
spice they use in their everyday cooking. The piquancy of some capsicums is essentially an irritation,
Spence (2018) explains, so why do so many people find the “oral burn” so appealing? Carstens et al. (2002)
investigates the neural mechanism of oral irritation from spices and carbonated drinks, and we can learn
about pungency and personal preference from Prescott and Stevenson (1995). The antibacterial and
antioxidant effects of spices have been known for millennia, and recent research (Billing & Sherman,
1998; Nilius & Appendino, 2013; Yashin et al., 2017) shows that the old wise ones were not at all wrong
compiling their materia medicas and bencaos to guide future generations on herbal healing. Of course,
there were plenty of exaggerated claims on the potential healing effects of some products, ranging from
their being an antidote for snake venom to the cure for death itself.

14 For a work introducing the chemistry of spices with a highly visual and novel take, see Farrimond (2018).

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Materia Medicas, Pharmacopeias, Bencaos

Materia medica (Latin for ‘medical material’) refers to a descriptive collection of knowledge about
substances—plant-based, mineral, or from an animal source—with therapeutic properties, usually in
the form of a book, often illustrated. It is a term from the history of medicine, named after the highly
influential book of Dioscorides, a Greek physician and pharmacologist from the first century AD . The
term pharmacopeia is closely related to this, but it refers to a more technical book that contains
directions on how to combine different materials for effective healing remedies. Basically, it is a drug-
making manual. Bencao (本草) [measure word for books; herb] is essentially the Chinese equivalent of
materia medica. It refers to compilations of classical Chinese medicinal literature. The Shennong
Bencaojing from circa 200 AD , although lost, is generally considered the first (see Nugent-Head, 2014;
Yang, ca. 206 BC –220/1998). A great explanation of the bencao tradition can be found in the introduction
of J.-N. Wu’s An Illustrated Chinese Materia Medica (2005), and Z. Zhao et al. (2018) offers a brief overview
on the classification of bencao literature and how it connects to traditional Chinese medicine. The most
famous bencao however, is the Bencao Gangmu, the sixteenth-century Chinese encyclopedia of materia
medica and natural history written by Li Shizhen. It is probably the most important book of Traditional
Chinese Medicine (TCM), building on the knowledge of earlier Chinese pharmacological works. It is often
translated to English as the Compendium of Materia Medica, and the first complete English translation
project is currently under way, headed by Paul Unschuld (2022). A modern, scientific example for a
materia medica-style compilation would be Duke’s CRC Handbook of Medicinal Spices (2002).
In the Arabic context, on the other hand, we must acknowledge the advances of Islamic
medicine, and the fruitful decades of the Islamic golden age that saw many scholars publish extensively,
forwarding the tradition of the Greeks, building on the works of Dioscorides, Galen, and Hippocrates.
The writings of philosopher and polymath Ibn Rushd (Averroes), physician and pharmacologist Ibn
Juljul, botanist Ibn al-Bayṭār, and alchemist Abū Bakr al-Rāzī were all influential in the history of Western
medicine and pharmacology. Maybe the most prominent of all was Ibn Sīnā (ca. 980–1037; latinized as
Avicenna), inspiring many future scholars for over centuries, such as Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) (Smith,
1980). His book al-Qānūn fī l-Ṭibb, completed in 1025, was used as a standard textbook at universities up
to the seventeenth century (Musallam, 1987–2011). Scholars still discuss him and his contributions

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(Sajadi et al., 2009), and compare his findings with recent pharmacological studies. An example is his
writing on the traditional uses and health benefits of saffron (see Hosseinzadeh & Nassiri‐Asl, 2013).

2.1.5 On the Role of Spices through Time

I must also touch on the change in meaning of what spices once were, and what they are now. It is now
clear that, in contrast to the present understanding, in the past spices were more valued for their
ceremonial or medicinal use. I would like to make the shift in usage explicit.
For example, the ancient Romans imported and used cinnamon in large quantities, but they did
not eat it or cook with it. They treasured it as incense and medicine instead. It is often repeated that
emperor Nero have burned (as incense and offering) a year’s supply of Rome’s cinnamon on his wife’s
funeral (whom probably he himself had killed) in 65 AD (Toussaint-Samat, 2009, pp. 437–438). We may
have stopped burning cinnamon, but it is not because these practices disappeared: the Catholic Church
still burns fifty tons of frankincense a year (Ash, 2020). It rather seems that most of the materials in
question gradually gained more favor for their culinary, over their ceremonial, appeal.
In the notion that the role of spices has changed over time, there is a universally observable
pattern: the gradual shift from their relevance in medicine toward gastronomy. Freedman (2015) writes
on social and cultural implications of the role in spices and their importance in health and wealth during
the Middle Ages. The shift is mainly due to the emergence of modern medicine and the marginalization
of traditional folk medicine, especially in developed, Western societies. What could be more telling than
the use of the term “alternative medicine,” clearly indicating the switch? What was once just “medicine”
—the “only” medicine —is now merely a secondary (and sometimes frowned-upon) option. Now
“medicine” refers only to (as it is called in some places) “Western medicine.” In many cultures with strong
roots in folk healing, the widespread use of medicinal plants, herbs, and spices are thriving and in recent
years these practices are even gaining international popularity. We could think of Traditional Chinese
Medicine, the Indian Ayurveda, or the Indonesian practice of jamu. 15 Besides this well-known shift
regarding spices and the healing factor, it is important to point out that in the past the line between food

15 Jamu is the name for the traditional medicine of Indonesia, encompassing practices or herbal healing with Javanese origins,
usually in the form of mixing ingredients in drinks and potions. For more, see Beers (2012).

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and medicine were much more blurred; this can still be observed for example in modern Chinese food
therapy, 食療 shiliao, rooted in ancient dietetic traditions (Engelhardt, 2001).

2.1.6 On Food and Language

One of the best examples of a linguistic study related to gastronomy is The Language of Food: A Linguist
Reads the Menu by Jurafsky (2014). Dan Jurafsky, a computational linguist and authority in the field of
Natural Language Processing (NLP), explores our connection to food and eating in a series of interesting
studies. From tracing the historic and linguistic origins of ketchup, macaroni, or salami, to what the
wording of a restaurant menu can tell us about prices. From a Chinese perspective, food and menus are
explored by Yao and Su (2019), while the topic of fruit-words is presented by Depner (2019).
My discussion here makes use of sensory words—nouns, verbs, and adjectives of gustation and
olfaction—surrounding spices and other aromatics, and in this aspect, previous studies of linguistic
synesthesia will definitely prove useful (see Huang & Xiong, 2019; Q. Zhao et al., 2019). Some cognitive
studies on sensory information have been conducted involving spices, and most interesting are the ones
that explore cross-modality relations. For example, an fMRI experiment concluded that reading words
with strong olfactory associations, such as ‘garlic’, ‘jasmine’, or ‘cinnamon’ activates the olfactory regions
of the brain (González et al., 2006). Another unique study looked at the possible corresponding sound
attributes to spiciness/piquancy, and a series of experiments found that fast tempo, high pitch, and
distortion are indeed linked to the sensation (Q. J. Wang et al., 2017). On a more linguistic note, Zhong
and Huang (2020) explored taste, examining the sensory lexicon around the realm of desserts. They
showed that “mouthfeel”, a multi-sensory concept, plays a more important role than the quality of
“sweetness.” Bagli’s Tastes We Live By (2021) is a recent publication that deals with the linguistic
conceptualization of taste in the English language.

2.2 RESEARCH GAP

I have started this chapter with a discussion of the literature on spices through the lenses of different
disciplines. I mentioned gastronomy, botany, history, trade, and economics, and after a brief touch of
classical medicine, I have circled back to philology, and finally landed on research combining language
and food, and the sensory modalities. So far, we have seen that studies on spices—specific or in

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general—are widely available, most notably in the form of historical works focusing on some aspect of
the spice trade or tracking the story of the material itself. Besides history, the availability of literature
from food and nutritional science, biology, and medicine is satisfactory, quenching the need of industry
professionals. In this field, we see a more rapid development, as new studies and findings are relatively
frequent, especially about popular spices.
What we also have seen is the obvious lack of linguistic studies themed around spice. A handful
of scholars have investigated questions related to language, almost exclusively from a historical linguistic
point of view, trying to unearth etymologies. The few available findings, however, are not collected, and
knowledge of spice names and related terminology is found only sporadically in many disciplines. In the
face of such scarcity of linguistic studies on spice terminology, it is not surprising that the Handbook of
Herbs and Spices of Peter (2012)—a standard reference work for chemistry and food industry
professionals—often relies on an online blog to list spice names! This online blog, created in the early
2000s, is a personal website of one Gernot Katzer, who currently rules over the internet with his
exhaustive collection of spice information, also including spice names in numerous languages. Katzer
(2006) supplies a massive amount of valuable information to the public, but his lists on spice names are
often inaccurate, and—since he is an individual writing about his own travels and empirical experiences
and not aiming at academia—sparsely cited.
In the problem statement of the previous chapter, I briefly mentioned that, in my opinion, the
lack of comprehensive publications regarding spice names causes a deficit of understanding among
authors who write about spices. Take for example the very recent Culinary Herbs and Spices: A Global
Guide by Opara and Chohan (2021, p. 11), in which the authors, attempting to give the Hindi name for
allspice, write “Kebab Chini,” which is the Hindi name for cubeb pepper (Piper cubeba),
kabābcīnī, a completely different spice. The problem is also illustrated by the examples below.

2.2.1 Faulty Claims

The following is a collection of erroneous, incorrect, inaccurate, or misleading quotations, supplied with
my comments, that show that the historians, botanists, and food writers responsible failed to correctly
identify the names of the very subjects of their treatises.
• “Cinnamon is derived from the Greek word for spice and the prefix ‘Chinese.’” (Czarra, 2009, p.
10)—a popular folk etymologization, with no proof.

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• “The name saffron is derived from zafarán or za’fran, the Arabian word for yellow.” (van Wyk,
2014, p. 124)—it does not mean yellow, but it was conflated with the word for yellow by
Europeans (also, “Arabian” is not a language).
• “The name [of saffron] comes from the Arabic for ‘thread.’” (McGee, 1984/2004, p. 422)—it does
not, rather the Arabic word is a loanword from Persian, and it only means ‘saffron.’
• “Pliny named the plant coriandrum, from the Latin for bug, coris. But it has other names—
cilantro (in the United States and Latin America), dhana [sic!] (in India), Chinese parsley (in
China, presumably).” (O’Connell, 2016, p. 87)—an ill-informed presumption and goes against
common sense. Chinese parsley is a name in English, not in Chinese.
• “In Sanskrit, black pepper is known as maricha or marica, meaning an ability to dispel poison,
and it is taken to aid digestion, improve appetite, ease pain, and to cure colds [...]” (Shaffer, 2013,
p. 3)—the fact that the author wrote “maricha or marica” shows that she does not know that
these are two different ways to transliterate one Sanskrit word (which has no such meaning as
she has described).
• “The name ‘paprika’ came from the Greek term for black pepper, peperi.” Other name changes
occurred as the spice moved through regional languages such as Greek, in which it is called
piperia.” (Czarra, 2009, p. 103)—while not entirely wrong, many steps were skipped in this
explanation, making it difficult to evaluate.

There are fallacies not only regarding the names but the circumstantial information regarding the nature
and history of the spices and the spice trade as well, ranging from failure to distinguish between spices
and spice mixtures, to confusing cities and travelers important in the spice trade.
• “The main distinction between the Indian and Japanese curries is that the Indian version uses a
combination of spices, while Japanese karē is made with curry powder.”
(https://www.tasteatlas.com/kare)—absolute nonsense, as curry powder is a combination of
spices as well.
• “And Malacca (Singapore today), a port poised at the gateway to the oceanic routes to Europe,
[...]” (Hill, 2004, p. vi)—this statement is horribly wrong, as Malacca is not Singapore.
• “Chinese traveller Sulaiman visited Kerala coast—recorded the black pepper cultivation and

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trade with China.” (Ravindran, 2000, p. 3)—Sulaymān was not a Chinese traveler, and the excerpt
talks about Sulaymān at-Tājir, a ninth-century Muslim merchant from the Sassanid port of Siraf.

These few selected lines can make it feel as though we are doomed if we look for accurate spice
names and origins in the spice literature, but the situation fortunately is not that bleak. I merely wanted
to show that in many instances, there is simply no awareness or effort to supply the reader with the
correct information, especially when it comes to names and etymologies.
Up to now, a comprehensive study on spices from a linguistics perspective is lacking. The
information already out there is sporadic and unorganized, and, as I have discussed above, it has been
botanists, historians, chefs, and historical linguists who contributed to the research on aromatic
products, their origins, and their place in human culture and its lexicon. In a few cases, findings happen
to be misinformed, thanks to some authors making presumptions along erroneous lines, which only adds
to the confusion. This is bound to happen when botanists attempt to venture into the lands of etymology,
or when food writers choose to sail the high seas of historiography. For a good illustration of this problem,
see the criticism of Haw (2017) on Austin and Felger’s attempt (2008) to trace the etymology of fagara
(Sichuan pepper), where the authors with a background in botany have made questionable assumptions
related to Classical Arabic phonology and morphology. I try to be careful to avoid similar mistakes, never
giving in to the temptation of baseless speculations, especially outside the realm of linguistics and
philology. With that being said, this work is intended to fill the lacuna that exists regarding research on
spice terminology.
Beyond my proposal to fill this gap with a study attempting to group and categorize aromatic
materials of the spice domain, I also aim to analyze the diffusion of spices informed by tracing the
journeys of loanwords and wandering words of three languages: English, Arabic, and Chinese. The quest
for exploring patterns of spice diffusion and spice terminology could yield new insights and open
possibilities for future research. Furthermore, an analysis of spice nomenclature based on linguistic-
cognitive features has not yet been made and constitutes an original approach.

2.2.2 Research Questions

I will now try to formulate the questions I aim to answer. The first two questions arise from the
investigation on the “diffusion of spices” and are more related to the philology component of the thesis.

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The third question is related to the corpus linguistic and cognitive component of the study, investigating
the “language of spices.”
Q1 Does the propagation of Wanderwörter within the domain of the spice trade follow the
diffusion of the materials?
Q2 Is there any underlying pattern behind the mechanisms of spice diffusion, considering
both the materials and the nomenclature?
Q3 Is there any influence on the naming of spices, in terms of sensory words and synesthetic
properties?

2.3 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

2.3.1 On Wandering Loanwords: Wanderwörter

Terms of the spice domain are often loanwords, likely to be Wanderwörter, meaning wandering words. A
Wanderwort (also known as a Kulturwort, “culture word”), itself a loan from German, is “a word borrowed
from one language to another across a broad geographical area often as a result of trade or adoption of
newly introduced items or cultural practices” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). We can observe this linguistic
curiosity typically in names of foodstuff, plants, animals, metals, and other artifacts, such as copper,
tobacco, potato, tomato, lemon (Trask, 2000, p. 366), materials which spread significantly due to trade.
Further examples are numerous: cumin, ginger, orange, pepper, silver, soap, sugar, wine, the most famous
example being tea.
The case of tea is well known, for its names have multiple origins in different Sinitic languages.
Mair and Hoh (2009, pp. 262–268) identify three groups of names for tea: te, cha, and chai. Mandarin
and Cantonese use cha, while te is from Hokkien, a Southern Min language variant. Tea trade was
prevalent at the port of Xiamen (Amoy), especially with Europeans after the mid-1500s, while land routes
such as the Tea Horse Road and the Silk Road already had exported tea for centuries from Yunnan and
Sichuan, the homeland of Camellia sinensis. Eventually both te and cha entered the English lexicon, but
more important is that almost all other languages adopted one or another of these words for tea (Mair
& Hoh, 2009) in the wake of merchant ships and trading caravans. Depending on geopolitical
circumstances, the maritime or continental name variants—te and cha—spread, so that in a drastic
oversimplification, we might say: it is te if transmitted by sea, cha if transmitted by land.

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This linguistic distribution is not unique to tea: genealogies of names for other consumables with
similar global stories are observable in many other Wanderwörter, such as chili, and ‘pepper.’ Both the
far-reaching journey of the Nahuatl word chīlli16 from the Aztecs of Mexico, and the ancient Sanskrit
term for the Indian long pepper, pippalī, 17 have intriguing stories to tell for linguists, historians, or
anybody else; see Dott (2020) for the chili pepper’s “cultural biography” in China, and Shaffer (2013) for
the story of black pepper. This becomes especially apparent when we think of the compelling fusion
expressed in the term ‘chili pepper.’ One of the objectives of this study is to address peculiarities arising
from complex histories of the spice names just mentioned above, but while trying to provide answers, a
holistic view of the spice domain should be kept in mind. An overarching linguistic study of substances
with similar features has not been conducted and might reveal new knowledge and patterns yet to be
found.
The instance of tea as a Wanderwort is relatively recent, and thus we are able to reconstruct the
steps of diffusion. Nonetheless, the origins of Wanderwörter are often obscure, and, to some extent
enforcing this connotation, some scholars (chiefly Indo-Europeanists) still “borrow” this term to refer to
a specific group of loanwords, where transmission through one or more unknown languages is suspected,
and/or the donor language is uncertain, as Michiel de Vaan (2008, pp. 199–201) writes. In his short
definition, Trask (2000, p. 366) fails to mention this latter issue with Wanderwörter. Another concern we
must also remember is that ‘wandering words’ are not always easily distinguishable from loanwords. In
fact, in the mid-nineteenth century, the beginnings of the Indo-European tradition of reconstructing a
proto-language was briefly misguided by the failure to recognize and separate inherited lexical items
from introduced ones (Polomé, 1990, p. 137). In hindsight, Wanderwörter should be considered a
subgroup in the general category of loanwords. Appealing to this idea, Polomé (1990) renders it in
English ‘wandering loanwords.’ One could argue that the main problem with Wanderwort research is
that sometimes—to put it bluntly—they are just too old to trace with surety. There are hardly any means
for uncovering origins and deciphering etymologies beyond a certain time-depth.

16 S. Wood, 2000–2022, chilli.

17 Macdonell, 1929, pippala.

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2.3.2 On Sensation
The spread of spice-related words is not limited only to the nomenclature of new products—which
presumably embraces foreign words, loanwords, and calques (loan translations) in high
concentration—but also to the different categories of terminology that describe the substance. New
sensations invoke new words (or give way to new meanings of existing ones), driven by the need to
express and describe taste, smell, color, and texture. With the help of corpora, we can collect sensory
words surrounding aromatics, and explore how humans discuss flavor, fragrance, heat, and spiciness. We
shall see if the function of modifiers and adjectives are there to help to identify spices, and we shall see
if patterns of spice diffusion (directionality, quantity of transmission) differ based on sensory properties.
With enough data we will be able to examine tendencies that pertain to land-based or maritime trading
routes.
Apart from words related to the sensory domains, mainly olfaction and gustation, it might be
worth examining the “language of spices” from another angle as well. By comparing linguistic behavior
regarding various spices, I expect to see different degrees of adaptation, ranging from just the basic
existence of the borrowed/translated name for a newly introduced substance, to highly dynamic and
versatile presence in everyday language use. Beyond the (a) name pepper—for example—we can
observe and effortlessly identify other “degrees” of linguistic use: (b) the incorporation of words for the
sensations induced by the spice or other characteristics of its nature (peppery); (c) cognate verbs of
seasoning and cooking (to pepper); and (d) denominal metaphors and idioms (to have pepper in the nose).
I hypothesize that the presence or absence of spice-related terminology and derivationally related words
in a language correlates with the levels of acceptance and familiarity in a society, i.e., the language use
reflects the degree of adaptation of the product, and ultimately its embeddedness in the culture. For
example, if a language names a color after coffee, cinnamon, or saffron, it is a good guess that a large
portion of the society is familiar with the product. This direction in research is one of the goals of this
discussion, as noted previously. Furthermore, we can ask interesting questions, such as:
Would considering different spices affect the categories of linguistic presence discussed above?
Would patterns of spice diffusion make a difference when looking at linguistic “behavior”? Spice names
and collocates invoke sensations from different sensory domains, and are strong “carriers” of synesthesia.
Zhao (2018) writes that linguistic synesthesia “describes a situation where perceptions in different

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sensory modalities are associated in both perceptual experiences and verbal expressions.” Evidence for
cross-sensory conventions occurs in the nomenclature of spices as well: sometimes such conventions
are obvious, but cumbersome to unearth and explicate.
In Spanish, the word for pepper is pimienta, from the plural form of Latin pigmentum, which is
“a material for coloring, a color, paint, pigment,” with an additional, transferred meaning in post-classical
Latin, “the juice of plants” (Lewis & Short, 1958, p. 1375), and a Spanish etymological dictionary indicates
“plant juice, food seasoning” (Gómez de Silva, 1985, p. 415). The emergence of this meaning of the word
for ‘pigment’ is believed to be due to the observed Mesoamerican practice of using dried chilies of the
genus Capsicum for seasoning dishes, which also worked as an organic food-coloring substance. After
Christopher Columbus returned from the New World with Capsicum annuum in 1493, the impact of the
new sensation was so strong that it replaced the existing Catalan word—pebre, the derivative of the
already mentioned Sanskrit etymon, pippalī, via the Latin piper, referring to black pepper (Piper
nigrum)—with pimienta. But, if pimienta is now black pepper, then what is the Spanish word for chili
pepper, the fruit of capsicum? Well, it seems it is chile in Mexico, pimiento in South America, but it is not
that simple. Further adding to our perplexity, pimiento is masculine, pimienta is feminine in Spanish.
And what is paprika, then? We start to see the piquancy of the problems, and the confusion is no less
clear in Spanish than in English. And, to raise the distress level even a bit more, it is worth mentioning
that chilies in Hindi are named mirch, which in turn comes from Sanskrit marica/marīca, the word for
“pepper-shrub, pepper-corn; black pepper” (Macdonell, 1929b, p. 219; Monier-Williams, 1899, p. 790).
The goal of offering these examples of a few spicy Wanderwörter is to demonstrate the chaos
surrounding conventions and common names of occasionally unrelated plants and their fruits, berries,
and seeds; their confluence with historical and geopolitical developments. I hope that a systematic
overview of the literature and methods combining corpus linguistics and philology will not only help to
untangle the threads of vernacular names ungoverned by rules, but also help us gain insight into the
connection between spice names and sensory domains.
The most exciting part of this novel approach is to see the “attitude” of different cultures. Are the
properties of spices universal? Would speakers belonging to the Chinese cultural sphere describe a
certain spice as having the same taste characteristics as Arabic speakers? Turmeric is often described as
bitter in English; would other languages do this as well? Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic perspectives

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in research on cognition, pragmatics, and semantics are copious, and one of the pioneers of their study
is Anna Wierzbicka, who has worked on the concept of semantic primes for decades. Finding universal,
equivalent core meanings spanning across languages has been a kind of holy grail in linguistics.
Following her framework, we will adapt these ideas as they are related to physical qualities and linked
metaphors (Goddard & Wierzbicka, 2014, pp. 55–79).

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3. METHODOLOGY

Realizing that there is little work done on building a spice name database, or on analyzing spice
nomenclature from historical and linguistic-cognitive perspectives, I have set out to assemble one that
would facilitate this kind of analysis. To introduce this very briefly: I have built a database of spices and
spice terminology by combing through secondary and primary literature, botanical databases,
encyclopedias and dictionaries, and searching for the spices in contemporary and historical corpora. I
then used a few selected features of these materials (region of origin, spreadability, etc.) and the
corresponding terms (analyzability, borrowed status, etc.) and looked at the set of spices as a whole,
trying to find patterns and make some observations about the geographic and linguistic diffusion of
spices, and various aspects of their naming.

3 .1 RESEARCH DESIGN PRINCIPLES

To achieve these aims, I first needed to think of an ideal way to compile and arrange complex sets of
information from sources that are highly interdisciplinary in nature. From the very beginning of the
design of this study, the following principles were kept in mind regarding the database of spice names:
1. The database must be grounded in the close study of the materials—the plants and their
products—especially from a historical and botanical standpoint. Awareness of the material’s
physical journey will help us to contextualize some of the ways the associated names spread.
Take for example the Sanskrit term referring to asafoetida (the dried oleoresin gum from Ferula
assa-foetida et al.): hiṅgu, which is the etymon of both Chinese 興蕖 xīngqú (Middle
Chinese (MC) /hɨŋ ɡɨʌ/), and English hing, but they took very different paths: while the Chinese
term is a learned loan from the time of the spread of Buddhist scriptures on the overland Silk
Road, the English word is a late sixteenth-century borrowing via the sea trade with Mughal India.
And if we study the source of the materials and learn about the plants, we will also realize that
all the asafoetida that was exported from India in the early modern period was in fact imported
from Persia and Afghanistan.
2. The database must be thorough in citing evidence; every word, statement, date, or other piece
of information should be carefully referenced. I have already explained the motivation and

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necessity behind this practice in chapter 1: it is enough to say that no publication currently cites
sources for the names they give (except philologists), and sometimes it is hard to find the
motivation and inspiration behind a term. It is always a good scholarly practice to record where
we found certain pieces of information, and when it comes to spice etymologies, this is necessary
to make it easier for future experts to verify or refute the findings.
3. The database should be easily expandable. Because of limited space, it is impossible for me to
include every spice. Therefore, I tried to create a pipeline, whereby a new material and its names
can be easily added to the fold, and quickly analyzed. This in principle can also accommodate
the future inclusion of incense, perfume, and herbs, which I will mention in Section 7.2 when
discussing future plans to expand on this research.

3.1.1 Identification, Confusion, Adulteration, Clarification

The ideal first step of all types of research related to spices, herbs, incense, and other aromatics is to
identify the product exactly. In the case of spices and incense, this is overwhelmingly a botanical
question, while in the case of other exotic aromatics, such as musk or ambergris, we must involve the
animal kingdom. Medical, pharmaceutical, and food industry studies are heavy on the hard sciences—
chemistry, biology—but they sometimes also contain valuable information about both common and
scientific names. All medical studies must start with the proper identification of the substance, in fact,
there is a range of studies about various techniques on identification and differentiation (cf. Ford et al.,
2019). The reasons for this are twofold.
First, in many cases it is not a straightforward task to tell the substances apart, because different
spices can have very similar physical qualities. For example, the fruits of Chinese star anise (Illicium
verum) and Japanese star anise (Illicium anisatum) basically look the same, yet the latter is toxic; see the
excellent points made by Small (1996) on the confusion of their common names. Uncertainty in
nomenclature and identity poses a further challenge to clinical trials if the origin of a substance is not
properly identified. Take, for example, Oketch-Rabah et al. (2018), who write on the confusion of
cinnamon and cassia nomenclature and its implications in pharmaceutical research. Consider first
cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum syn. C. zeylanicum). Common names include true cinnamon and Ceylon
cinnamon. However, the cinnamon sold in the US and UK markets is generally not the same spice: most

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of the product labelled as cinnamon on American shelves is in fact cassia (Cinnamomum cassia syn. C.
aromaticum) (Oketch-Rabah et al., 2018), which is sometimes called ‘fake cinnamon’ or ‘bastard
cinnamon.’ With that in mind, the Latin scientific name of the former makes a bit more sense now: verum
means ‘real, true, genuine.’ But why is cassia fake cinnamon? This is due to historical reasons, from a time
when the introduction of the much cheaper cassia pushed down the cinnamon prices drastically in the
nineteenth century (Wijesekera & Chichester, 1978). Most scholars consistently refer to C. zeylanicum as
cinnamon, and to C. cassia as cassia, but it is not uncommon in everyday language use to confound the
two, especially in referring to cassia as cinnamon, out of innocent ignorance. For more detail and on the
identity of cinnamon and cassia, see Section 4.4.2. Uncovering confusions from under heaps of
synonyms leads us to interesting historical events that sometimes explain the vernacular names of a
particular product, as the case of cinnamon and cassia shows.
Second, adulteration and contamination are rampant in the spice industry. Saffron (Crocus
sativus)—the most expensive spice by weight, nearing the price of gold—is famous for being cut with
(and substituted by) the much cheaper safflower petals (Carthamus tinctorius). Even their names reflect
these practices: although the two are very different and unrelated plants, their similar dyeing properties
and the constant confusion about them have left their mark. The name of safflower has been influenced
by the French word for saffron, but these names have different origins (both ultimately from Arabic). On
account of its use in adulterating saffron, safflower has also come to be known as “bastard saffron,” first
attested in 1548.
We do not need to stalk modern pharmacological studies to find examples of confusion: the
identity of saffron was also elusive in ancient China, where, at its introduction in the early Middle Ages,
it was confused with safflower, and both were casually called 紅花 honghua. It is said that Buddhist
monks picked up saffron in Kashmir on their way from India to China, but the knowledge about how to
employ it was not clear until the Yuan dynasty, when it was actually used and imported (Laufer, 1919).
During Tang times, it was connected with the—also strongly yellow—spice turmeric. Turmeric came
first, and got the name 鬱金 yujin [yü-gold], and later saffron was named 鬱金香 yujinxiang [yü-gold-
aromatic] (Schafer, 1985). The confusion of saffron and turmeric (and truthfully every other yellow spice
used as a dye) is also observable in Classical Arabic: kurkum ‘turmeric,’ historically also ‘saffron’ (etymon

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of the word curcuma), and the perceived “similarity” of Sanskrit kuṅkuma ‘saffron’ did not help
to clear the confusion either. See Section 4.6 for more on this issue.
Keeping all this in mind, I feel I must lean on rudimentary botanical identification in the
investigation, clearly linking the plants and plant parts to the products and their vernacular names. This
is important, as it can remove some of the confusion that arises when two or more product names are
used interchangeably, and the practice will help highlight problematic cases from the start.

3.1.2 Challenges in Spice Categorization

One of the most challenging parts of this project is to choose a meaningful way to categorize spices and
spice names. The design should make sense in multiple dimensions: botanically, historically, and maybe
even gastronomically, but at all times the linguistic focus must be kept in mind. The main goal is to assign
a spice name to the appropriate product/material, which is correctly identified on a botanical level. This
is not always straightforward, as some materials can have multiple botanical sources, one plant can yield
multiple differently used plant products, and the same names can be used for different substances.
One problem arises from the fact that many terms can have a meaning on different levels of
specificity, depending on context and intent. Spice words are rich in senses. For example, according to
the Princeton WordNet (PWN), black pepper can be both a hypernym and a hyponym to pepper,
depending on whether it refers to the plant or to the dried fruits with the husks on (Fellbaum, 1998). In
this specific case, black pepper #2 and white pepper are sister terms, but white pepper is also a subordinate
to black pepper #1. This situation is then further complicated with the fruit of the Capsicum (and its
endless cultivars), that also have the name pepper. Thus, it is not immediately clear if we should treat
black and white pepper as two different spices, or two manifestations of the same spice. There are many
other examples where a term can be understood on different levels: as a plant, a family of similar plants,
a specific spice, or a group of spices. In an everyday setting, lexical semantic hierarchies are not always
adhered to, and people organize spices in their heads according to their own convictions. One author
might mention white pepper under the heading black pepper on account of their biology (a botanically
driven categorization), while another might separate them and discuss them as different spices based
on their different uses (a culinary approach). As for the historian, mentioning white pepper might be
just not at all important. The reasons for these variations are usually determined by what is the intention
of the categorization, and who is the target behind the treatise. For us layman, however, spice entities

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are most prominently structured by way of their names: the words are the handrails to cling to if we are
not familiar with an item. So what about pink peppers? Pink peppercorns (Schinus terebinthifolius; S.
molle) are so-called “false peppers,” meaning that they are not from the Piperaceae family. Pink peppers
are fruits of botanically unrelated trees in South America, matching the shape and size of peppercorns.
Are they a kind of pepper?
My point with the above—admittedly rather confusing—example is to show that, if one were to
debate whether black pepper and white pepper are the same spice (or not, for that matter), we would
need gastronomical or botanical grounds on which to make our arguments. And despite all imaginary
arguments, the real answer goes beyond the botanical or gastronomical reality (illustrated by adding
pink pepper to the problem), to answer the question: What is pepper conceptually? We will see from the
names and naming practices, that the word pepper and its equivalents carry a sense of ‘prototype
pungent spice,’ and, above biology or function, it is ultimately the concept of “pepper” that matters. Thus,
I propose that whenever a novel spice is considered appropriately close to the existing concept, it could
also fit the category of pepper, as reflected in its name.
Even more challenging for categorization, is the case in which we are not sure which spices were
meant under certain names in different times. Cinnamon and cassia are a great example of this (Section
4.4.2), as it is not certain whether the cinnamon and cassia of antiquity were the same spices or not. But,
parallel to the question of identity, we also have seen that it does not always matter, attitudes differ from
place to place: while Europeans do sometimes differentiate, in China and the United States the concept
of cinnamon is singular, including cassia. For the analysis, I had to decide whether to treat them as one
item or make a distinction. In a few cases, a spice name became obsolete and got “lost,” meaning that it
cannot be identified with certainty, and we have to guess what the name referred to based on botanical
and historical data, and categorize it accordingly; this is the case with amomum. The most extreme
situation is the situation in which a spice goes extinct, as happened to silphium in antiquity. This study
does not contain such items. In these cases, we need deep historical knowledge to say anything about
the identity of said spices and there place in the context of the others.
Our knowledge or lack thereof also determines the concept we have of a certain item. For
example, most people who know that nutmeg and mace come from the same fruit of the same plant and
from the same place will always connect the two in their heads, so that the two spices are literally

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inseparable (until harvest, of course). From historical records, however, it is clear that knowledge
regarding these substances was spiked with misunderstanding and inaccuracy, even among people in
the spice business. According to an anecdote, during the Dutch monopoly of the Banda islands, an officer
back in the home office wrote an angry letter to the Spice Islands colony, ordering its leaders to plant
more mace trees, because there was a higher demand for it than for nutmeg—a request that must have
raised some eyebrows on the plantations (National Geographic, 2014). This shows that botanical
organization is accessible only to those with botanical knowledge.
Lastly, I must also mention that the language and words we use for these materials also define
our understanding of them. Analyzable, descriptive names help us to identify certain materials, while
loanwords with forgotten original meanings (cf. mace) might not say much. For example, no Chinese
would have the above misconception of mace, when faced with its name: 肉豆蔻皮 roudoukoupi, which
means the ‘skin/cover of the nutmeg,’ which is what it actually is. Conversely, the Chinese initially
confused some cardamoms and nutmeg (unrelated plants), simply because they were both round and
sourced from the same region. Today, both are 豆蔻 doukou, with modifiers attached to distinguish
between them.
Another point to take into account is the myriad of “fake” spices that feature especially in English.
False peppers, false cardamoms, bastard cinnamon, and bastard saffron, are a reflection of historical
economic attitudes, often pointing at the problem of adulteration. Names such as true pepper and true
cinnamon summon a sense of authenticity. This, however, is highly subjective, depending on culture and
language: after all, bastard cinnamon is just “normal” cinnamon for others, and false cardamoms are just
cardamoms to those who have a different prototype for what a cardamom is. In a sense, it all boils down
to translation, which can be arbitrary. Who decides if Chinese 桂 gui should be rendered cinnamon or
cassia in English?
To avoid getting lost in the details of lengthy binomial names or botanical genera, I have opted
to use a set of the common names of the spices to be used for identification, under which the various
spice names belong. These identifications are sometimes arbitrary (e.g.: All spicy, red, hot, chili peppers
of the Capsicum genus and their names go under “chile.”), but always clear-cut and explained in the data
chapter. I have therefore grouped some spices and spice names into larger categories, trying to find a
smallest common denominator within the three languages. This only affects a few items: various false

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cardamoms in the Amomum genus will be grouped under the umbrella term: false cardamom. One better
way would have been to divide the categories on a purely botanical basis, but I prefer this solution, in
order to make this set of closely related spices more accessible to the reader and to avoid allowing some
of these items to get lost in the crowded lists of botanical categories. They constitute a linguistic and
conceptual category as well, using similar prototype words in all three languages in their names. Using
common names as identifiers also facilitates linguistically driven comparison, and so these identifying
names are essentially the same as the set of spices determined earlier in Table 1.1: allspice, anise,
asafoetida, caraway, cardamom, cassia, chile, cinnamon, clove, coriander, cumin, dill, false cardamoms,
fennel, fenugreek, ginger, long pepper, nutmeg, pepper, saffron, Sichuan pepper, star anise, turmeric,
vanilla.

3 .2 D ATA C O L L E C T I O N

The data collection for this project was conducted in three stages: assembling the set of spices, gathering
and analyzing their names, and researching the etymologies of their names. The result of these three
stages are three datasets open for inspection as the electronic files spices.csv, names.csv, and
etymologies.csv, available on my GitHub page: https://github.com/partigabor/phd-thesis-viz/tree/
main/data. Chapter 4 will introduce and explain the data in all three levels.

3.2.1 Collecting Spices

In the first stage, after I have assembled the set of spices, I collected information about them from
encyclopedic handbooks written by experts in the plant sciences and spice industry professionals. I have
made great use of van Wyk (2014), Mabberley (2017), and S.-Y. Hu (2005) at the start, especially when
matching plant products to plants. At this stage, I have focused on the identity and characteristics of
spices including geographical distribution and native habitats, especially where I saw any room for
confusion. As I collected scientific names, I also recorded the common/vernacular names for each spice
as an initial exploration, and I linked them to a botanical database that can supply further information.
I have also collected information regarding their cultivation and basic uses.
Surprisingly, the abundance of synonyms is also palpable in the scientific nomenclature, so that
sometimes one plant species has dozens of binomial taxa. In an attempt toward standardization of

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taxonomic data, collaborative efforts have sprung up across numerous authoritative institutions to
assemble and link their respective databases and sources. These online projects are usually run by a
consortium of leading botanical institutions worldwide, and among these key entities are the Royal
Botanic Gardens at Kew and Edinburgh, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Harvard University Herbaria
& Libraries, the Geneva Conservatory and Botanical Garden, the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle
in Paris, the South African Biodiversity Institute, the Australian National Botanic Gardens, and the
Kunming Institute of Botany, just to name a few.
When it comes to botanical information, navigation in the ocean of scientific binomial names
hiding the identity of a plant can be overwhelming (Spencer&Cross, 2020). To alleviate this, I turned to
a range of botanical databases for the purposes of correct identification and information-gathering. I
used databases such as The Plant List (TPL) (http://www.theplantlist.org), which was recently
superseded by the World Flora Online (WFO) (http://www.worldfloraonline.org); the International Plant
Names Index (IPNI) (http://www.ipni.org); Plants of the World Online (POWO)
(http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org); the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
(https://www.gbif.org); the Flora of China (FoC) hosted on eFloras (http://www.efloras.org/index.aspx)
and the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) (https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/). TPL, for instance,
claimed to be “a working list of all known plant species,” though now under WFO it is “an online flora of
all known plants,” and as such also connects different plant checklists and biodiversity databases using
the nomenclatural and publishing information. I will frequently refer to POWO, which contains
botanical descriptions and geographic data (native and introduced habitat), besides the usual
taxonomic and botanical information.
In addition to online databases, I will occasionally also turn to reference books from the field of
food technology and nutritional science, such as the Handbook of Herbs and Spices (Peter, 2006, 2012),
and The Encyclopedia of Herbs & Spices (Ravindran, 2017a). These encyclopedias, although aimed at
chemistry-focused food industry professionals, also contain holistic information on the plant-based
products and discuss their origins and vernacular names, besides the usual particulars on usage and
medicinal qualities. It is also worth noting that various dictionaries usually mention the scientific names
of plants.
Regarding traditional medicine systems, I frequently consulted modern inventories of TCM to

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identify materials and extract Chinese names, including the connecting databases of Hong Kong Baptist
University: the HKBU Medicinal Plant Images Database,18 the HKBU Chinese Medicinal Material Images
Database 19 HKBU Chinese Medicine Specimen Database, 20 and the PolyU Chinese Herbal Medicine
Database.21 Armed with botanical knowledge, we shall ideally have an clear picture of the spices, and a
firm base to which we can connect linguistic data.

3.2.2 Collecting Names, and Their Annotation

In the second stage, I have collected the names of spices by combing through the published literature
and online databases, whether botanical (as described above), historical, or culinary, always prioritizing
the existing linguistic and philological treatises, of course. I have linked the collected spice names to the
respective spices and the result of this is an inventory of around 360 spice names that link to the initial
set of twenty-four spices. For each spice, I tried to collect its names in the three languages, and it was
also my goal to record where I have found these names. Therefore, thorough citations are available in the
dataset pointing to books, journal articles, databases, dictionaries, or sometimes even Wikipedia. As a
preparatory step for the linguistic analysis, I have added some annotations.

Conventionalized terms
First and foremost, I have checked the words against dictionaries to see if their use is conventionalized
or not, and I have marked words that appear in a dictionary. If a word occurs in multiple dictionaries, I
only recorded the one that I deem the most authoritative or reliable, unless they are both extremely
interesting entries (or contradict each other).

Present status of the terms

Then, as an internal operational measure, I have assigned the names to categories regarding their
lexicographic status as spice terms: default, alternative, historic, archaic, and obsolete. This was

18 https://library.hkbu.edu.hk/electronic/libdbs/mpd/index.html

19 https://library.hkbu.edu.hk/electronic/libdbs/mmd/index.html

20 https://libproject.hkbu.edu.hk/was40/search?channelid=44273

21 https://herbaltcm.sn.polyu.edu.hk/

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mostly done to better orientate myself after the terms started to accumulate, and I used the
following scheme:
“Default” marks the names the spices are mostly prevalently known by today, the terms that most
people are familiar with. They comprise the words that should be most commonly found in a dictionary,
or most frequent in a corpus. These are the names you see as section-headers in this study, and they also
act as identifying names in my datasets. The term “default” as an indicator is somewhat arbitrary, since
there is no reason for one item not to have several equally relevant synonyms (e.g., chili vs. chili pepper),
but I needed to choose one main term to represent one spice. The reasons for this are the following: (1) I
needed a convenient term to “call” each item, so they can be efficiently compared across the three
languages. (2) I needed an identifying key for all of the other names of the same spice, and (3) I wanted
to avoid any possible confusion between items that have overlapping common names (e.g., pepper vs.
pepper is problematic, so I settled on pepper vs. chile22).
“Alternative” refers to any other current name that a spice can be known by, regardless of
popularity, context, or reason. For example, aniseed is an alternative for anise (the default term), and
Chinese parsley is an alternative name (and also an alias) for coriander.
“Historic” refers to once-important terms that at a certain point in history would have been
considered default but are now less used but, due to their role and popularity in the past, are still relevant
today. This category especially includes cases where a spice was attested under a different name from
what it is known by now. For example, badian is now a chiefly historical term and was attested before
the now standard star anise.
“Archaic” refers to historic words that are rare and not relevant today, yet are still recognizable,
such as Guinea pepper, an early name for Cayenne pepper (a name for chile, Capsicum annuum), but
referring to one of three African spices today unrelated to chile.
“Obsolete” refers to names that are essentially dead, e.g.. amomum, which was last used to denote
a specific spice in the nineteenth century. Most of the above categorizations were made by following
dictionaries. If a dictionary uses these remarks, (e.g., “obsolete”), I comply with the dictionary. I have
identified a couple of cases that refer to spice names that are not attested anywhere, and I assume them

22 In my dataset and code, I use the more botanically affiliated term, chile, to avoid confusion/errors due to spelling.

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to be the author’s invention/translation, perhaps best characterized as “speculative.” One example would
be the term English spice for ‘allspice’, found in Raghavan (2007, p. 64) but nowhere else, where I think
the author decided to translate this name from some other language which does use this name (e.g.,
Polish). The motivation behind the name is that Jamaica, where allspice is sourced from, was a British
colony, and it was the English who disseminated allspice in Europe during that time.
I have highlighted the so-called default items in bold throughout the tables in chapter 4, as they
also act as keys or identifiers with respect to the alternative names corresponding to the same spice.

Borrowed terms
In my analysis, I have marked spice terms according to their borrowed status. Based on data from
dictionaries, etymological dictionaries, primary and secondary literature, and my own judgment, I have
indicated whether the name is a borrowing or not, or whether it needs further checking. I have annotated
spice names with ‘yes,’ ‘not,’ and ‘maybe.’ Whenever available, I relied on word origins from general and
etymological dictionaries for this information, but for a number of words I could not find existing entries
or published research, and I introduced my own theories.

Meanings, Literal Meanings, Glosses

For every term in Arabic or Chinese, I added a gloss, so the literal meanings could be decoded, and most
names also have written notes and comments on their logic, formation, origin, or any other remarkable
aspect. Sometimes a short explanation is needed to understand the emergence of a term, or the grounds
for its existence. The dataset of spice names is populated with terms corresponding to the botanically
informed binomial names and the materials they represent, and, based on the information from stage
one, the names are also annotated with the macro-areas of their native geographic origin.

Attestation
I have recorded the details concerning attestation where available, noting a date, approximate date,
century, and period (e.g., early Old English, Tang dynasty, etc.). For this information I used dates from
the OED, for English, and historical corpora for Arabic and Chinese where available. The sources of the
attestation dates are noted in the dataset. Whenever this was not available, I resorted to estimation based
on circumstantial historical sources. These are all marked in the relevant dataset.

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I have also tried to gather the pre-modern documents where each name was recorded, with the
title and author of the historical works given for future reference.

3.2.3 Collecting Etymologies

In the third stage, I collected detailed etymological information on selected names: the terms that were
marked as default, and a few historic and highly relevant alternative names. Accordingly, we now have a
parallel set of spice nomenclature of the three languages for twenty-four spices, and we can compare
them in terms of borrowed status, and their etymological development and origins. The etymologies will
be discussed in the next chapter in detail, under every spice, and I also highlighted them using dedicated
environments called etymology boxes (see, e.g., “Etymology 1”).
In terms of representation and storage, I deviated from the usual text format, and I have recorded
etymological data in such a way that it is machine-readable, but still easy to grasp and edit for the human
eye as well. I have separated etymological stages, and types of information for each word, creating large
spreadsheets that are relatively easily accessible and modifiable for both human and machine. Doing so,
I enabled a way to be able to extract only specific information when needed (sources, attestation dates,
donor languages, etc.). I also facilitated for the geospatial plotting that can be found in chapter 6, which
gives a visual representation of the etymological stages the words have embarked upon.

3.2.4 Collecting Additional Data

To facilitate for geospatial mapping, I needed language data that supplies coordinates. For this purpose,
I used the The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) (Dryer & Haspelmath, 2013) and chiefly the
Glottolog 4.6 (Hammarström et al., 2022) datasets published by the Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology (under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License). I have
altered my data to conform to the above datasets in two ways. First,variations in language names were
mapped to Glottolog languoids23, for example, Middle Persian is mapped to Pahlavi. Second, I have added
coordinates to some (dead) languages that did not have a location, for the sole purpose of putting them
onto a map. For example, Medieval Latin lacked coordinates, and I have added the approximate
geographical midpoint of Western Europe, where it was primarily used.

23 https://glottolog.org/glottolog/glottologinformation

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3.3 SOURCES

3.3.1 Primary Sources

One core component of this study is philological research. Philology is the meticulous study of literary
texts, primarily of historical documents, to study language, history, philosophy, literature, culture,
religion, or any traditional knowledge of exceptional importance strongly connected to a society,
primarily through the analysis of historic texts (sometimes written in now-dead languages). Modern
philological research relies on two types of sources: primary and secondary literature. Primary literature
denotes historical texts, the so-called classics. The already-mentioned De Materia Medica of the Greek
physician Dioscorides (ca. 40–90 AD ) (Dioscorides, ca. 50–70/2005) and the books of Roman historians
such as Pliny the Elder (23/24–79 AD ) and his Naturalis Historia (Pliny the Elder, 77/1855) are good
examples, as well as the first-century cookery book by Apicius (Apicius, 1977). Also available are materia
medicas from the Islamic scientific golden age, such as the al-Qānūn fī l-Ṭibb (Canon of Medicine) of Ibn
Sīnā/Avicenna (980–1037) (Ibn Sīnā, 1025/1329) and fantastic miscellanies from the Tang dynasty era,
such as the Youyang Zazu (Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang) from the ninth century (Duan, ca. 860).
Indeed, we must not forget the Bible or the Quran, as they are also rich historical and linguistic sources
for our topic. A number of these primary texts are available in their original form through museums’ and
libraries’ online databases, as transcribed editions in historical corpora, and of course in published
English translations. A vast number of classical texts (Greek and Latin) can be accessed through the
Perseus Digital Library (Crane, n.d.). Critical editions of a classical text, such as that of the famous
Periplus Maris Erythraei by Casson (1989), or de Goeje’s Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum series
(1870) are also considered primary. Ancient and Classical dictionaries, such as the Shuowen Jiezi, or the
Lisān al-ʿArab are also an integral part of philology.
Secondary literature is everything building on these works, including monographs and histories
published in recent times reviewing a multitude of original texts.

3.3.2 Etymological and General Dictionaries

Besides the literature itself discussed earlier, a core resource for the philology component in this research
is etymological dictionaries. Etymological thirst, the seeking of word origins, has been one of the
cardinal thrills for early thinkers starting with Plato, and we will make use of the advances made in the

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past centuries. The OED provides detailed etymological information based on previous works in English.
For other languages, a few other works serve the purpose: for Greek, Beekes and van Beek (2010); for
Hebrew, Klein (1987); for Old Chinese, Schuessler (2007); and for Chinese, Liu et al. (1985). Unfortunately,
Arabic, for many reasons, 24 lacks an authoritative etymological dictionary, but we can still turn to
essential reference works such as the Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition (EI2) 25 (Bearman et al., 1960–
2005), or the Encyclopedia Iranica (EIr) (Foundation & Yarshater, 1996–present).

Note 3.3.1. References to dictionary entries are made very frequently in this work, and

so I made the decision to use a compact way of citing dictionaries. Instead of

referencing every entry separately, I will indicate the entry as a page number or

headword and reference every dictionary just once. This would save us from the pain

of reading (Oxford University Press, n.d.-a) (Oxford University Press, n.d.-b) (Oxford

University Press, n.d.-c) and its endless permutations. It will make the number of

dictionary entries in the bibliography less oppressive and the running citations more

reader-friendly. I will also use footnote citations whenever I reference a dictionary, to

make reading throughout more comfortable.

3.4 CORPORA

The second major component of this study is corpus linguistics, and I will use corpora from three major
languages: English, Arabic, and Chinese. I chose these languages for two reasons. First, they represent
three influential civilizations in the history of spices, as well as powers actively participating in trade
throughout history, each having its zenith at slightly different historical periods, as I described previously.
Second, these languages have historical corpora available.
For modern corpora, I will use the English Web 2020 (enTenTen20, circa 36.5 billion words),26

24 For a brief overview on the matter, see Blažek (2006).

25 Limited access online at https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2 9. Accessible online at

https://iranicaonline.org/

26 Accessible at https://www.sketchengine.eu/ententen-english-corpus/

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the Arabic Web 2012, preprocessed with the Stanford tagger (arTenTen12, ca. 7.5 billion words),27 and the
Chinese Web 2017, Simplified version(zhTenTen17, ca. 13.5 billion words), 28 all hosted on the website
Sketch Engine (SkE) (https://www.sketchengine.eu/) (Kilgarriff et al., 2004, 2014). Enormous web
corpora such as the above contain billions of words; therefore I will certainly have enough instances
even for relatively rare spices.

Table 3.1 The list of corpora consulted in the thesis

language type period corpus size

English web modern enTenTen20 36.5 billion words

Arabic web modern arTenTen12 7.5 billion words
Chinese web modern zhTenTen17 13.5 billion words

English books historic (15th–19th c.) EHBC 826 million words

Arabic books historic (7th–12th c.) KSUCCA 47 million words
Chinese books historic ( –20th c.) Chinese Text Project 25 million characters
Chinese books historic ( –20th c.) Scripta Sinica 797 million characters
Chinese books historic ( –20th c.) CBETA ? million characters

For historical corpora, I have consulted a few collections. For English, I relied on the English Historical
Book Collection (EHBC) (EEBO, ECCO, Evans) hosted on the Sketch Engine, that is around 826 million
words and contains material from books published between 1473 and 1820, with the vast majority written
around 1600, and the OED itself is full of historical quotations and attestation dates. For Arabic, I have
settled on using the King Saud University Corpus of Classical Arabic (KSUCCA), which is around 47
million words containing words from literature on various genres between the seventh and eleventh
centuries, including words from books on medicine, geography, law, history, and religious texts (Alrabiah

27 Accessible at https://www.sketchengine.eu/artenten-arabic-corpus/

28 Accessible at https://www.sketchengine.eu/zhtenten-chinese-corpus/

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et al., 2013; Alrabiah et al., 2014). As for Chinese, I have used the Chinese Text Project (CTP) (Sturgeon,
2021, n.d.), which has base of 25 million characters from pre-modern Chinese documents, not including
community-edited texts. I also used the Scripta Sinica (SS),29 around 754 million words containing words
from classics ranging from ancient times up until 1949 (Academia Sinica, 1993–2008); the Quan Tangshi30
(Tang poetry collection), which contains around 48,900 poems; and the Chinese Buddhist Electronic Texts
Association (CBETA)31 project, which contains the Chinese Buddhist Canon, also known as the Chinese
Tripitaka (Ch’en, 1964, pp. 365–386). Thus, the sources accommodate textual heritage from ancient times
up until the twentieth century.

3 .5 I L L U S T R AT I O N S

All photographs of spices displayed (except where stated otherwise) are by courtesy of Christine Latour
at Aromatiques Tropicales, a spice vendor in Dégagnac, France (https://www.aromatiques.com/en/).
Credit also is due to the photographers Felix Farmer32 and Philippe Janina.33 For some images of incense,
photos are courtesy of Glorian (https://glorian.org/).

29 Accessible at http://hanchi.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/ihp/hanji.htm

30 Accessible via the CTP: https://ctext.org/quantangshi

31 Accessible at https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/en/

32 http://www.felixfarmer.com/

33 https://philippejanina.wixsite.com/photographe

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4. THE SPICES

After outlining the background and methods for this study, I will now introduce the data that this project
is build upon: the spices and their names. Every section in this chapter introduces a spice, and on some
occasions two or more closely related ones. Introducing all twenty-four from the set of spices included
in this study would make this work extremely long, so I selected six items that I think are interesting
from a diffusion point of view. This sample of spices will now be presented alphabetically, with all
sections are adhering to the following structure:
(0) A spice profile box, a business-card-like environment for the spice under discussion containing
short, factual information, linked to a botanical database. This box also identifies the spice by
listing its vernacular names in multiple languages. This is intended to be a convenience for the
reader, a reference point of sorts one can return to at any time.
(1) A brief description of the nature, characteristics, and importance of the spice. This is intended
to be an introduction to the spice and its uses, and it includes the physical description of the
material, its role as medicine, culinary seasoning, perfume, or dye, and its cultural significance,
either locally or globally.
(2) A subsection on the botany, origins, cultivation, and identity of the spice, where the latter is
included only if deemed necessary because the situation is unclear or confusing. Under the
heading “botany” I discuss only basic information regarding geographic distribution, native and
introduced habitats, and conditions of growth that factor into a plant’s “spreadability,” a quality
directly indicative of its value as a crop. Agronomy and harvesting will also be mentioned where
they reveal interesting details about scarcity and demand.
(3) A subsection on the history of the spice follows, focusing on the first time(s) it is mentioned,
whether it is evoked in religious scriptures, described in pharmacopeias, documented in
historiography, or praised in poetry. Besides this, key steps and events on the spices’ journey and
spread will be introduced, especially where an item’s history is not widely known, or where there
are a lot of misconceptions. Materials whose cultural history, itinerary, and names have already
been researched and written about will be discussed only briefly, the entry directing the reader
to existing scholarly publications.
(4) Lastly, I will examine the spice terminology in a subsection on the names of the spices under

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scrutiny, focusing on word origins and etymological analysis on one hand, and collecting and
explaining synonyms on the other. This step will consider three languages, English, Arabic, and
Chinese, and will cover historic and closely related or alternative names. An inventory of spices
treated in this work follows; items discussed in this chapter are shown in bold type.

1. allspice (Pimenta dioica) 13. fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)

2. anise (Pimpinella anisum) 14. fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum)
3. asafoetida (Ferula assa-foetida et al.) 15. ginger (Zingiber officinale)
4. caraway (Carum carvi) 16. long pepper (Piper longum)
5. cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum) 17. mace (Myristica fragrans)
6. cassia (Cinnamomum cassia et al.) 18. nutmeg (Myristica fragrans)
7. chile (Capsicum annuum et al.) 19. pepper (Piper nigrum)
8. cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum) 20. saffron (Crocus sativus)
9. clove (Syzygium aromaticum) 21. Sichuan pepper (Zanthoxylum spp.)
10. coriander (Coriandrum sativum) 22. star anise (Illicium verum)
11. cumin (Cuminum cyminum) 23. turmeric (Curcuma longa)
12. dill (Anethum graveolens) 24. vanilla (Vanilla planifolia)

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(a) allspice (b) anise (c) asafoetida*

(d) caraway (e) cardamom (f) cassia

(g) chile (h) cinnamon (i) cloves

(j) coriander (k) cumin (l) dill

Figure 4.1 Photographs of the spices in this work (I). Credit: Aromatiques; *Glorian

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(a) fennel (b) fenugreek (c) ginger

(d) long pepper (e) mace (f) nutmeg

(g) star anise (h) pepper (i) saffron

(j) Sichuan pepper (k) turmeric (l) vanilla

Figure 4.2 Photographs of the spices in this work (II). Credit: Aromatiques

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4.1 ALLSPICE

⸙ 1. Allspice

English: allspice; pimento; Jamaica pepper. Arabic: ‫ فلفل إفرنجي‬fulful ifranjī [Frankish pepper]. Chinese: 多
香果 duōxiāngguǒ [many-spice-fruit]. Hungarian: szegfűbors [clove-pepper]; jamaicaibors [Jamaican-
pepper]; amomummag [amomum-seed].

Plant species: Pimenta dioica (L.) Merr. (syn. Pimenta officinalis Lindl.)
Family: Myrtaceae
Part used: unripe fruit; leaf
Region of origin: S. Mexico to C. America; Caribbean
Cultivated in: Jamaica; Mexico; Honduras
Color: dark brown

(a) berries (b) powder (c) leaves

Figure 4.3 Allspice berries, powder, and leaves from Pimenta dioica

Note 4.1.1. Introducing the spice profile box. As can be seen above in spice profile 1,

presenting allspice, this business-card-like device gives a quick, concise reference for

the spice under discussion. This is intended to be a convenience for the reader, who

can check this brief, standardized summary for a given item whenever necessary. The

box also contains a clickable link to the related plant species in the botanical database

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POWO, where more information can be found, such as the plants’ biodiversity,

distribution, botanical synonyms, as well as images of specimens.

Allspice, also known as pimento and Jamaica pepper, refers to the dried unripe fruits of a tropical
evergreen tree growing in the Caribbean: the Pimenta dioica. The dried berries are dark brown, hard to
the touch, and 4–6 mm in diameter (thus larger than black pepper). Their signature crown is a small ring
of the calyx (van Wyk, 2014, p. 210). This is one of the few spices that do not come from the East; chili,
vanilla, and allspice are the traditional three when one is listing spice products native to the Americas
(disregarding cacao, which is not considered a spice today). It is also the only spice that is cultivated
exclusively in the western hemisphere (Duke, 2002, p. 21). The term allspice is a coinage playing on the
notion that the flavors and aroma of allspice are similar to those of clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, and black
pepper (Mabberley, 2017, p. 717)—the most popular spices in Europe at the time Europeans first
contacted this New World spice. People who see only ground allspice but not whole berries tend to think
that is in fact a spice mixture, a mistake reinforced by its name and rich flavor profile. Usually ground to
powder, allspice is one of the key ingredients of Caribbean cuisine, especially jerk style dry-rub meat
preparation. It is also used in European sausage making, pickling, baking, and flavoring liqueurs,
regarded as an overall “handy spice.”34 It also found its way into some Middle Eastern spice blends.

Note 4.1.2. Allspice is sometimes called pimento, which is also the name of a cultivar of

Capsicum annuum, famous from the Southern United States appetizer pimento-cheese.

It is therefore important not to confuse allspice with the heart-shaped mild cherry

peppers that North Americans also call pimiento or pimento.

4.1.1 The Botany, Origin, and Cultivation of Allspice

The allspice tree is a small mid-canopy tree or shrub with smooth, bay-like leaves and tiny white flowers.
The berries turn dark purple if left to ripen, and the leaves and the bark are also aromatic (Riffle, 1998, p.
279). Belonging to the myrtle family (Myrtaceae), allspice is related to other aromatic trees, such as clove,

34 The Icelandic name is allrahanda, literally ‘of all hands,’ meaning ‘for various purposes’; showing its multifaceted uses.

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eucalyptus, and the bay rum tree. Its binomial name is made up of pimenta, the Portuguese (or corrupted
Spanish) equivalent of ‘pepper,’ and dioica ‘of two houses’ (Greek di- from dyo ‘two’ and oikos ‘house’),
indicating that the male and female flowers are found on different plants (Peter, 2012, vol. 2, p. 166).
Allspice is indigenous to the regions ranging from Southern Mexico to Central America and the
Greater Antilles of the Caribbean, especially Jamaica (Czarra, 2009, p. 146). Where naturalized, it spreads
by birds carrying the seeds. Allspice has been introduced into a few neighboring places, such as
Colombia, Venezuela, and Florida (POWO, 2022a, p. 146). In 1885 it was introduced from Jamaica into
Hawaii and Kauai, and it even reached Tonga.
Allspice is cultivated as a crop in a few countries, notably in Jamaica, Mexico, and to a lesser
extent in Honduras and Grenada. The primary producer and the source of the highest quality being
Jamaica. Saplings are grown from seeds, and transplanted when still small. The trees need well-drained
soil and humid conditions (van Wyk, 2014, p. 210). It is one of the very few spices that no one has managed
to grow in the East, so transplantation efforts were quickly abandoned, and its commercial cultivation is
confined to the Americas (Duke, 2002, p. 21). Harvesting happens similarly to the way black pepper is
harvested: the still-green, unripe fruits are picked by hand and then dried in the sun.
The flavor of allspice mainly comes from the component eugenol, which is dominant both in the
fruit and the leaves, but other compounds also add to the complexity of its aroma. Eugenol—also called
clove oil, for it constitutes 80-90% of the essential oil from clove buds (Barnes et al., 2007, p. 166)—is
widely used as a flavoring agent by the food industry and in pharmacology and is also found in cinnamon,
nutmeg, and bay leaves. It has antiseptic, antibacterial, anesthetic, and analgesic properties (Ulanowska
& Olas, 2021). The leaves of a related plant called the West Indian Bay Tree (Pimenta racemosa) is used
to produce bay rum, a popular essential oil used by the perfume industry for its spicy notes.

4.1.2 The History of Allspice

There is not much we know about allspice before the arrival of the Europeans, except that the Aztecs
used it to spice up their chocolate drink (Farrell, 1985, p. 27), although Dalby (2000, pp. 145, 177) doubts
this was the case as early as that period. According to Duke (2002, p. 21), the Maya used allspice for
embalming. We know that it reached Europe as a consequence of Christopher Columbus’s voyages.
Spanish colonizers must have encountered allspice in the West Indies sometime after Columbus and his
crew explored the islands of Hispaniola, Cuba, and Jamaica, and the year 1494 is reported (Opara &

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Chohan, 2021, p. 12). Columbus himself did not find it. In fact, he did not recognize any spice that he was
so keen on finding—pepper, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon—but kept himself and his patrons under the
delusion that he would. In his first letter to Ferdinand and Isabella he writes: “On this island there are
many spices and great mines of gold and other metals. [...] I believe that I have found rhubarb and
cinnamon” (Columbus, 1893, pp. 10–18)—in reality, he had found none.35
He was adamant that the islands he discovered were full of spices and brought up excuse after
excuse (out of season, etc.) when after every voyage he returned with no spices (Dalby, 2000, p. 149). He
also believed that he was in India or Cathay, on an outlying island. Between apologies, Columbus also
promised more gold, silver, cotton, mastic, and slaves. As Dalby (2000, p. 150) reports, what he recorded
in his private journal is a bit more honest and realistic version of events: “I think that many trees and
plants grow here which will be highly valued in Spain for dyes and medicinal spices. But I am sorry to
say that I do not recognize them.” Columbus repeatedly regrets his ignorance in botany in his journal
(see also Columbus, 1893/2010, p. 57).
Interestingly, authors love to claim that Columbus brought back allspice (together with vanilla
and chili): “He returned with allspice from the West Indies, chilies from Mexico and vanilla from Central
America” (Craze, 1997, p. 17), and “Columbus brought it back to Europe thinking it was pepper.” (Czarra,
2009, p. 146), or “Though he did not find the Spice Islands, Columbus brought allspice, vanilla and red
peppers from theWest Indies back to his Spanish supporters” (Parthasarathy et al., 2008, p. 1). This is not
true, as he most likely never even saw allspice, but it was reported to him that it is there and could be
cultivated, along with cinnamon, and mulberry for silk production (Colón, 1571/1959, p. 151). Columbus
returned from his first voyage of 1492–93 with some gold nuggets and jewelry, pearls, a hammock,
tobacco, the turkey, and a few poor captured Taínos, but no spices were presented to the Spanish
monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. He did bring back pineapple and cassava (J. Turner, 2004, p. 11).
Diego Álvarez Chanca, the court-appointed physician who accompanied Columbus on his
second expedition in 1493 is often credited with bringing home both chili, and allspice (McCormick, n.d.),
but in his 1494 letter describing the flora and fauna, he mentions only agi, also axi—modern Spanish ají

35 Columbus’s first letter of his first voyage, sent on March 4, 1493, from Lisbon to the Spanish court (and its translation) is
also available online at King’s College London. Transcription: http://www.ems.kcl.ac.uk/content/etext/e021.html, translation:
http://www.ems.kcl.ac.uk/content/etext/e022.html

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from Taíno (see Corominas, 1987, p. 34). and says also that the natives use it to season their food, with
what we now know as Capsicum annuum: the chili pepper (Chanca, 1494/2003, p. 311).
In the following century the Spanish tried to turn Mexico into a spice plantation by transplanting
eastern spices, an effort that mostly failed. Only after this did the colonizers start to pay proper attention
to native spices (Machuca et al., 2020, p. 6).
Francisco Hernández de Toledo, King Philip II’s court physician and naturalist spent 7 years in
New Spain between 1571–1577, studying its species and conducting interviews with the natives. He was
the first to formally describe allspice. He called it Pipere Tavasci ‘Tabasco pepper’ (today Pimienta de
Tabasco, after the region of Tabasco, famous today for a brand of hot sauce. Hernández also recorded the
Nahuatl name of allspice: xocoxochitl ‘sour flower.’36 Hernández likens the flowers to pomegranates, and
the aroma to that of orange blossoms, describing it as being very pleasant and attractive, with a sharp
taste of fruit. (Hernández, 1615, p. 2). In the Machuca et al. (2020) translation:

Xocoxochitl, meaning sour flower, is a large tree, with leaves like those of the oranges,
red flowers like a pomegranate, but with an aroma like the orange blossom, and in such
a smooth and pleasant way, that even the leaves of the tree add to its attraction: the fruit
is round, and hangs in clusters, which at first appear green, and then beige, and finally
toward black: it is sharp and scathing to taste, and good-smelling.

According to Machuca et al. (2020), although allspice was known by the Spanish from early on, “there
are few historical records of its production and trade,” and only in the eighteenth century did they start
to consider American products to have economic potential.
Allspice berries are around thirty percent larger then peppercorns, and since their color and
shape resembles black pepper and it gives a spicy taste to food, it is no wonder that the Spanish called
them pimiento ‘pepper.’ The Portuguese version is pimento, and later the botanical name Pimenta was
given to the genus of plants related to allspice (Farrell, 1985, p. 26). I disagree with the often repeated

36 cf. S. Wood, 2000–2022, xococ, xochitl.

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trope that the Spanish explorers took allspice berries for pepper and called them pimiento “by mistake.”37
These people knew exactly what they were looking for and that what they found was not the mighty
black pepper; but for them it was a kind of pepper. The crew showed samples of pepper and cinnamon
to presumably confused Native Americans, hoping for directions, and, as Columbus wrote in his journal
on the fourth of November, 1492, they indicated by sign language that there was a lot of it around (Duke,
2002, p. 21; Columbus, 1893/2010, p. 67). The Europeans, however, soon recognized the value of allspice,
realizing that, even if it was not the expensive black pepper itself, it was more pungent and exotic than
the cheap Old World substitutes juniper and myrtle berries (which are very similar to allspice in
appearance and usage) (Dalby, 2000, p. 150).
In short, allspice was introduced to Europe by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, and its
import was first recorded in 1601, according to the Britannica (n.d.) and Farrell (1985, p. 26). After 1655,
when Jamaica became a British colony, as it was for nearly three centuries, the Brits developed a taste
for allspice and started to use it to season meat dishes, sauces, and pickles (A. Green, 2006, p. 74). They
were also responsible for its spread to some extent, as illustrated by the names given to allspice in some
languages, e.g., ,Polish ziele angielskie ‘English herb.’

4.1.3 The Names of Allspice

Allspice is a fascinating case, providing as it does a plethora of names that showcase many of the
motivations, mechanisms, and solutions people use when naming spices. As I mentioned before, some
people are puzzled about whether allspice is actually a spice blend. The names in some languages often
add to the confusion, an example being the French quatre-épices (lit. ‘four spices’), which can have the
sense ‘allspice,’ but also can be ‘a kind of spice mix’ made up of four different spices.38

37 Britannica, 2022, allspice.

38 TLFi, 2012, quatre-épices

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English
Etymology 1. English allspice, from all + spice; after the flavor profile that resembles the
combined aroma of cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and black pepper, 1621a
a. OUP (n.d., s.v. allspice)

Note 4.1.3. Introducing the Etymology box. This device, as seen above in Etymology 1,

offers a quick look at a word’s origins and development.

Since its introduction to the spice cabinet, allspice has been known by many names from which
currently allspice seems to be prevailing. Allspice was formed by compounding all and spice, for its flavor
was perceived to be a combination of four characteristic spices that the Europeans knew and sought:
black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.39 It was first recorded in 1621: “Ambergreese, nutmegs, and
all spice,”40 and it probably inspired the French toute-épice ‘all-spice,’ attested in 1762.41
Sadly, the original word for allspice was lost with the demise of the native Taíno people of the
Caribbean; nevertheless, we have Taíno42 words such as barbecue, cassava, guava, hammock, and tobacco
(Rafinesque, 1836, p. 229). As noted above, it is assumed that it was the Spanish who first made contact
with the allspice berry who simply called it pimienta ‘pepper.’

Etymology 2. English pimento ‘allspice; sweet pepper’, ca. 1660 < partly Portuguese
pimenta ‘allspice; sweet pepper; black pepper’ < and partly Spanish pimiento ‘hot and
sweet pepper; formerly also black pepper; pepper plant of both kinds,’ earlier pimienta
‘black pepper; peppercorn; ground pepper’ thirteenth century, 1495 < Medieval Latin
pigmenta ‘plant juice; food seasoning; condiment; spices; perfumes,’ plural of
pigmentum < Latin pigmentum ‘colour, paint; ointment; drug; spiced wine’, from pingō
‘to paint’ + -mentum ‘instrument.’a
a. OUP (n.d., s.v. pimento); OUP (n.d., s.v. pimento); OUP (n.d., s.v. pimiento); Gómez

39 OUP, n.d., allspice; Britannica, n.d.

40 OUP, n.d., allspice.

41 TLFi, 2012, toute-épice.

42 Taíno is a now extinct Arawakan language.

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de Silva (1985, p. 415) and Corominas (1987, p. 495); C. T. Lewis and Short (1879, s.v.
pigmentum).

For a long time pimento (and to a much lesser extent pimiento)—the words for ‘pepper’ in
Portuguese and Spanish, respectively—was commonly used in English to refer to allspice. This is still the
case in Jamaican English, for example, where the term allspice is not used. In North American English
however, pimento now rather refers to a small, round variety of chili pepper (Capsicum annuum),
commonly known as cherry pepper, as explained in note 4.1.2.
The corruption and mix-up between the English words pimento and pimiento and their origins
is as confusing as it gets. For the sake of a clear understanding, let us first consider the modern names
for allspice in Spanish: pimienta de Jamaica, and Portuguese: pimenta-da-jamaica. In both cases,
pim(i)enta, with a final -a, means ‘pepper’, referring to peppercorns of the usual black and white pepper
(Piper nigrum). In Spanish and Portuguese, the word endings -o and -a mark the grammatical gender, the
significance of which dissipates in English. It is important to remember, however, that the Spanish form
pimienta emerged first from a Latin neuter plural suffix in the thirteenth century. Thus, perhaps a century
or so later, when the word pimienta was already embedded in Spanish, speakers perceived the word as a
feminine noun, and a vacuum of a masculine counterpart emerged. This allowed for a practical
differentiation by gender between the peppers of the Old Word and the New World. Corominas (1987, p.
459) explains that pimiento derived from pimienta, and it was first applied in the Americas for the red
fruits of the chili.
Gómez de Silva (1985, p. 415) makes the most compact distinction: “pimienta ‘(black) pepper;
allspice’, pimiento ‘(hot and sweet) pepper.’” In contemporary Spanish, pimiento (the masculine form)
refers to the fruits and plants of the Capsicum family, e.g., the numerous spicy chilies and mild bell
peppers of red, green, and yellow, while pimienta (the feminine form) refers to the small round fruits of
black and white pepper and their powdered forms. The distinction seems consistent, belonging to this
latter group, see, for example, pimienta dulce ‘sweet pepper,’ and pimienta gorda ‘fat pepper,’ both of
which refer to allspice, not to be confused with pimiento dulce, which refers to sweet paprika powder.43
Pimento in English is a partly Portuguese, partly Spanish borrowing, while pimiento comes from

43 Española, 2014, pimiento, -a.

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Spanish. In fact, it is explained in the OED that in the ‘allspice’ sense of the word, pimento, from
Portuguese pimenta (da Jamaica), went through an alteration influenced by the Spanish word form,
which is not attested in the ‘allspice’ sense. Ergo, Spanish pimiento might not have referred to allspice in
Spanish at the time when the borrowing happened. And if so, pimento is a borrowing from Portuguese
pimenta, meaning ‘pepper,’ and, as pimenta da Jamaica ‘allspice,’ influenced by Spanish pimiento ‘chili,
sweet pepper’, also in the sense of the pepper plants of both kinds (chili and black). Spanish pimiento
formerly had the sense of ‘black pepper, peppercorns, and ground pepper’ (before 1495), with an earlier
form pimienta (thirteenth century), now usually in sense of ground pepper and peppercorns. 44 The
Portuguese connection is discussed only by the OED, as other dictionaries do not mention it. A direct
Spanish borrowing is also plausible if we consider that it was the Spanish who most likely brought it
back first, probably calling it pimiento/-a, and they were responsible for its subsequent diffusion in
Europe.
English spellings of this Romance word varied greatly, using forms such as piemente in the late
1600s. The origin of these words is the classical Latin pigmentum ‘a material for coloring, a color, paint,
pigment,’ with a transferred meaning of ‘the juice of plants’ in post-classical Latin. 45 The word
pigmentum is made up of pingō ‘to paint’ and -mentum, a suffix denoting an ‘instrument, medium,’ well
recognized from Romance languages and English (e.g., excitement). According to Corominas (1987, p.
459), Catalan pimienta is attested in the thirteenth century, and it comes from the plural (pigmenta) of
Latin pigmentum ‘coloring, paint,’ which already meant ‘drug, ingredient,’ and later, ‘condiment’ in
Medieval Latin. Derivingfrom this, in 1495 pimiento was applied to the plants bearing the pungent red
fruits of the Americas. Pigmentum also entered English as pigment ‘paint, dye, ingredient in an ointment,
drug.’ According to the OED, Medieval Latin pigmentum also referred to spiced drinks (ninth century),
perfumes, and hence spice in general. Old French cognates support this, pigment having the sense of
‘balm, fragrant spice’ in the twelfth century. Anglo-Norman pigment/piment meant ‘spice, spice wine,’46
and Middle English pihmentum (twelfth century, later piment) had a sense of “a spiced drink, a remedy

44 OUP, n.d., pimento.

45 C. T. Lewis and Short, 1879, pigmentum.

46 OUP, n.d., pigment.

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or concoction containing spices,” 47 “a sweetened, spiced wine used for refreshment and in medical
recipes; a medicinal potion.” 48 Piment in French was later applied to chili, especially the cultivar of
cayenne pepper. (The OED points to the sense ‘cayenne pepper’ in a “tenth-century French source,”
which must be an error.)
Allspice is also known as Jamaica pepper, for it mainly grows on the island and for the historical
reasons described above. Many languages calqued pimienta de Jamaica from Spanish, or another
transmitting language (e.g., Italian pepe della Giamaica). Jamaica pepper was first recorded in 1661: “A
kind of Pepper, that tastes like Cloves, and very Aromatick (known by the name of Iamaica-Pepper).”49
The name myrtle pepper echoes the similarities of the allspice tree with European myrtle (Myrtus
communis), especially after the resemblance of their purple berries. Beyond the physical resemblance,
myrtle berries are also edible and are also dried to add to pepper mills as a spice. Furthermore, the
European myrtle has aromatic leaves and wood as well, and it is used to grill and smoke meat in Southern
Europe since Roman times, especially on Sardinia and Corsica; the same way the Caribbean people use
allspice wood and leaves. The myrtle berry appears in Roman and Greek mythology as well (van Wyk,
2014, p. 186).
The name clove pepper has “chemical reasons”, namely that this name arises from the aroma of
allspice that reminded people of clove. This is due to its eugenol content we discussed above. Szegfűbors
lit. ‘clove-pepper’ is the most common name for allspice in Hungarian still, and it is used in sausage
making.
One of the most interesting spice names we can come across in my opinion is newspice. The term
is now archaic in English, but the idea still exists in a few European languages, such as Serbian and
Macedonian најгвирц najgvirc from German (Neugewürz), Czech and Slovak (nové koření/korenie), and
Turkish yenibahar and Romanian ienibahar from Ottoman Turkish ‫ یڭیبهار‬yeñibahar; all the above
literally mean ‘new spice.’
The reason behind these names is that, during the seventeenth-eighteenth centuries, allspice

47 Harper, n.d., pigment.

48 R. E. Lewis et al., 1952–2001, piment.

49 OUP, n.d., Jamaica.

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“suddenly” arrived in Central and Eastern Europe as a new (and possible marketed as a trendy) spice.
This happened a century after the red hot paprika took the world by storm (by the sixteenth century it
reached Hungary from the Ottoman Empire), and while the chili did not conquer northern Europe,
allspice—to an extent—did. We could philosophize about why the chili did not deserve the name ‘new
spice’ when it first arrived, or why the Europeans—except in the south—were reluctant to assimilate it
into their cuisines. Was the pungent chili too harsh for a Northern palate to consider? Was it the
sophisticated chemical complexity of allspice that made it fashionable in Victorian England? These
questions could lead us into deep waters regarding the human palate and cultural attitudes toward
spices and spiciness, as well as into considerations of environmental and genetic factors deciding the
heat of preference, explored in interesting papers such as Spence (2018) and Törnwall et al. (2012).
We know that, in the beginning, allspice was overlooked by Europeans, and this is possibly the
reason why allspice’s original name did not survive, unlike the Nahuatl word chīlli. Allspice was later sold
and used in beverages and cookery, but its rising star never came close to that of chili. In Asia, where
chilies were adopted early on and, eagerly transplanted, transformed and revolutionized cuisine forever.
It is impossible to think of Indian, Indonesian, or Chinese dishes without chilies today. Inversely, allspice
is mostly unknown in East Asia, and the reasons behind it are as botanical as well as historical: in the
sixteenth-seventeenth centuries no one knew how to grow allspice, while chili could effortlessly be
grown everywhere. In addition, the whole trajectory was that Europeans did not sail to Asia to sell
spices—they went to get them.
As the twentieth century came around, allspice—the only spice still exclusively imported from
the western hemisphere—quietly became just one of many spices, and the fervor that had met its
introduction had
faded a little. America was not new anymore, and the name new spice as well became obsolete.
An English textbook for students of Italian narrates a letter from 1680 about this Nuova Spezie and the
author’s opinion on it:

I Am much obliged to you for the Drug you sent me inclosed in your last letter, about
which I cannot tell you any thing but that it is called the New Spice, and it comes as it is
said, or as it is guessed, from the West-Indies, and not from the East-lndies; and it is but

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six months that I had knowledge of it from Count Laurence Magalotti, who showed it
me under the abovesaid name of New Spice. How many different tastes are found in it
by several honest folks ! that of the clove is the principal ; that of the nutmeg is the
second in rank ; the cinnamon comes as it were the third in order ; next the citron ; then
the smell of the musk and of the amber, and the most sweet taste of sugar. The truth is,
in my opinion, that it is a pretty Drug. I am in Florence, and with for an occasion to do
you service ; so command me with all freedom, and be certain that I will count it as good
luck to have any power to serve you. I affectionately kiss your hands. Florence, 26th
March 1680. (Baretti, 1755, p. 5)

And so we have established a few categories when it comes to the names of allspice: (1) names
that are made up of spice as a headword and a modifying word, (2) names that use pepper as a headword
with a modifier, and (3) names that are taken from Portuguese and Spanish. See Table 4.1 for a concise
overview.

Table 4.1 Various names for allspice in English

Species Name Source

Pimenta dioica allspice vanWyk (2014)
Pimenta dioica clove pepper Duke (2002)
Pimenta dioica Jamaica pepper van Wyk (2014)
Pimenta dioica myrtle pepper Peter (2012)
Pimenta dioica newspice Peter (2012)
Pimenta dioica pepper cloves James (2022)
Pimenta dioica pimento van Wyk (2014)
Pimenta dioica pimento berry OUP (n.d.)
Pimenta dioica pimiento OUP (n.d.)

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Arabic
Etymology 3. Arabic ‫ فلفل إفرنجي‬fulful ifranjī ‘allspice’ [European pepper], literally
‘Frankish pepper,’ named so because it was transmitted by Europeans, 1700?a
a. Baalbaki (1995)

Arabic, similarly to English, boasts a diverse set of names for allspice. First and foremost, it is
known as filfil ifranjī ‘European pepper.’ Ifranjī literally translates to ‘Frankish,’ but it became the epithet
for white Europeans, similarly to the term farang50 in Southeast Asia. The rationale behind this name is
evident: it was Europeans who introduced this spice to the Middle East and North Africa in the centuries
following its debut.
Allspice’s Middle Eastern history is the topic I have found the least amount of information on, as
against every other spice in this chapter. As it is an ingredient that arrived long after classical times and
it is not discussed in the literature I have consulted; modern articles deal with it only for its
pharmaceutical and health benefits, not describing its journey. The challenge to find further Arabic
synonyms is also increased, because both the English names allspice and pimento are ambiguous. I have
found examples of wrongly glossed entries in both Arabic and Chinese dictionaries. Be that as it may, I
have managed to collect a few other Arabic names for allspice from contemporary dictionaries, and these
can be seen in Table 4.2.
Further common vernacular names are filfil ḥulw lit. ‘sweet pepper’ and bahār ḥulw lit. ‘sweet
spice,’ where bahār ‘spice’ is a loanword from Persian. Persian ‫ بهار‬bahār means spring (the season), and
it was borrowed into Arabic with the sense of blossoms and foliage, alluding to the leaves and flowers of
plants as the source of many spices. 51 In the ‘spice, seasoning, condiment’ sense, the word spread
regionally via Ottoman Turkish (loaned from Arabic). Similarly to the case of English, the word for spice
was associated with the allspice berries, and consequently resulted in the already mentioned Turkish
yenibahar [newspice] ‘allspice’, and μπαχάρι bachári ‘allspice.’ Thus, just like English, Arabic propagates

50 A word of Persian origin, applied to the Franks during the Crusades (from Old French franc), and later by extension to any
white merchant, and used from Persia to Thailand.

51 Dozy, 1881, p. 121.

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allspice names by using the words for ‘spice’ and ‘pepper’ with modifiers indicating qualities of taste, or
the name of those who carried the spice.

Table 4.2 Various names for allspice in Arabic

Species Name Tr. Gloss Source

Pimenta dioica ‫ بهار حلو‬bahār ḥulw sweet spice Wiktionary (n.d.-b)
Pimenta dioica ‫ فلفل البساتين‬fulful al-basātīn pepper of the gardens Almaany (n.d.)
Pimenta dioica ‫ فلفل إفرنجي‬fulful ifranjī European pepper Baalbaki (1995)
Pimenta dioica ‫ فلفل تابل‬fulful tābil spice pepper Almaany (n.d.)
Pimenta dioica ‫ فلفل حلو‬fulful ḥulw sweet pepper Baalbaki (1995)

Chinese
Etymology 4. Mandarin Chinese 多香果 duōxiāngguǒ ‘allspice’ [many-spice-fruit],
maybe a semantic translationa
a. MDBG (n.d.)

In Chinese, allspice goes by the name 多香果 duōxiāngguǒ [many-spice-fruit], supposedly a

Chinese rendering of allspice. However, in China allspice is practically non-existent; it is not used in
dishes, does not feature in TCM databases, and generally is unknown besides in Western specialty
grocery shops. A search in Baidu Index yields no results as well. All the names except 甜胡椒 tián hújiāo
‘sweet (black) pepper,’ shown in Table 4.3, are relatively modern semantic translations of presumably
English sources. Just as in Arabic, it obviously does not show up in pre-modern corpora, and is scarcely
present in the modern corpus.

Summary
Table 4.4 shows all the names of allspice that can be found in dictionaries, in a trilingual setting.

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Table 4.3 Various names for allspice in Chinese

Species Name Tr. Gloss Source

Pimentadioica 多香果 duōxiāngguǒ many-spice-fruit Kleeman and Yu (2010)

Pimenta dioica 全香子 quánxiāngzǐ all-spice-seed Spices Journey (2022)

Pimenta dioica 甜胡椒 tiánhújiāo sweet-barbarian-pepper Lau (n.d.)

Pimenta dioica 牙買加胡椒 yámǎijiā hújiāo Jamaica-barbarian-pepper MDBG (n.d.)

Pimenta dioica 眾香子 zhòngxiāngzǐ many-spice-seed MDBG (n.d.)

Table 4.4 Conventionalized names for allspice in English, Arabic, and Chinese, found in dictionaries

Language Term Gloss Loan Source

English allspice no OUP (n.d.)
English Jamaica pepper no OUP (n.d.)
English pimento yes OUP (n.d.)
English pimento berry no OUP (n.d.)
English pimiento yes OUP (n.d.)
Arabic fulful al-basātīn pepper of the gardens no Almaany (n.d.)
Arabic fulful ifranjī European pepper no Baalbaki (1995)
Arabic fulful tābil spice pepper no Almaany (n.d.)
Arabic fulful ḥulw sweet pepper no Baalbaki (1995)
Chinese duōxiāngguǒ many-spice-fruit no Kleeman and Yu
(2010)
Chinese tiánhújiāo sweet-barbarian-pepper no Lau (n.d.)
Chinese yámǎijiā hújiāo Jamaica-barbarian-pepper yes MDBG (n.d.)
Chinese zhòngxiāngzǐ many-spice-seed yes MDBG (n.d.)

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4.2 A S A F O E T I DA

⸙ 2. Asafoetida

English: asafoetida; hing; devil’s dung. Arabic: ‫ حلتيت‬ḥiltīt. Chinese: 阿魏 āwèi. Hungarian: ördöggyökér
[devil’s root]; aszatgyanta [asat resin]; bűzös aszat [stinking asat].

Plant species: Ferula foetida (Bunge) Regel; Ferula assa-foetida L.; Ferula narthex; et al.
Family: Apiaceae
Part used: gum-resin (latex)
Region of origin: Iran; W. and C. Asia
Cultivated in: Iran; Afghanistan
Color: from pale yellow to brown

(a) resin (b) powder, colored with turmeric (c) plant

Figure 4.4 Asafoetida in various forms, and one of its principal sources Ferula assa-
foetida in the Kyzylkum Desert. Credit: (a) Glorian; (b) Aromatique; (c) Public Domain.

Asafoetida is the dried, golden brown oleoresin that forms after the cutting of the stems of
various ferula plants of Central Asia. The material itself is a waxy gum-resin, and it is sold either in gum
or powdered form. Asafoetida is an extremely pungent, strong-smelling substance; it is described as
having a “garlic-like” and “sulphurous odor” that is sometimes too strong in itself and must be diluted
with other materials (van Wyk, 2014, p. 138). Asafoetida is a drug and spice, and it was used for centuries

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in both Asia and Europe (Leung & Chen, 2019). It is still an integral part of Indian cuisine as an ingredient,
while in Europe and East Asia it was mainly utilized as medicine.
Regarding the characteristics and uses of the plant asafoetida, there are parallels with the now
extinct giant ferula plant, which is believed to be the source of the lost silphium or laserpitium of
antiquity. Silphium was a drug used in ointments of traditional Greek medicine, and a coveted ingredient
in Roman cuisine. It was introduced from Libya in North Africa and was once a commercially crucial
product, even featured on Roman coins. We now believe that over-harvesting led to its demise (Dalby,
2000; Langenheim, 2003; Leung & Chen, 2019; van Wyk, 2014).

4.2.1 The Botany, Origin, and Cultivation of Asafoetida

Asafoetida is obtained from species of the genus Ferula in the Apiaceae family, such as Ferula assa-foetida,
F. foetida, and F. narthex (Mabberley, 2017). These plants are “robust perennial herbs” that can grow to 2
m. high, and as umbelliferous plants surmounted by large yellow flowers (van Wyk, 2014, p. 138). The
plants cope well in mountainous and dry, desert-like conditions of Iran (from Yazd to Lar), up to
Southern Uzbekistan (Kyzylkum Desert), and the Qandahar region of Afghanistan, where they grow wild
(Leung & Chen, 2019). Asafoetida is wild-harvested the same way it has been for thousands of years. The
plant is cut before flowering, at the base of the stalk just above the root, and left exposed. The exudate is
then collected once it solidifies, and this process is repeated again and again for up to three months, until
no more liquid can be tapped (van Wyk, 2014, p. 138).

4.2.2 The History of Asafoetida

As ferula plants were never transplanted from Iran and Central Asia over the last couple of thousands of
years, its history and spread are connected with trade, especially overland. 52 A fantastic and recent
chapter on the history of asafoetida now exists under the title The Itinerary of Hing/Awei/Asafetida across
Eurasia, 400–1800 by Leung and Chen (2019).

52 According to news reports of last year, India, the biggest consumer of asafoetida only started experimenting with its
cultivation in the last couple of years (Express News Service, 2021).

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4.2.3 The Names of Asafoetida

English
Etymology 5. English asafoetida, a. 1398 < Medieval Latin asafoetida [stinking asa] <?
from Persian āzā ‘mastic’, in a Lanized form, asa + Latin foetid ‘ill-smelling, stinking’,
(feminine of fœtidus)a
a. OUP (n.d., s.v. asafoetida); Laufer (1919, p. 353); Steingass (1892, p. 42)

Asafoetida (also spelled asafetida) is a term directly from Medieval Latin that found its way into
the English lexicon via the early modern European medicinal and botanical literature. Often seen with
archaic spellings, such as “assafœtida,” the name is made up of the Latinized version of Persian
‫ازا‬aza/āzā53‘mastic’54, and Latin foetida, feminine of foetidus ‘stinking, ill-smelling, fetid.’55
The first detailed discussion of asafoetida’s name comes from Laufer’s Sino-Iranica (1919, pp. 353–
362), where he vehemently opposes the theories of Persian origin regarding aza, stating that its
purported meaning, ‘mastic,’ is “a product entirely different from what we understand by asafoetida”; he
prefers the inferred theory first proposed by Garcia da Orta (1563/1913, p. 41) that asa—“mutilated by the
druggists of the middle ages”—somehow derives from the laser or Pliny’s laserpitium (a synonym for
silphium, an important spice, medicine, and aphrodisiac used in antiquity, as just mentioned above).
None of the two explanations are supported with documentary evidence, and he is right that “in no
oriental language is there a word of the type asa or aza [...].” I am not sure why Laufer immediately
dismisses the connection between mastic and asafoetida; both are obtained from the dried oleo-resin of
Western and Central Asian plants, and even his own descriptions of mastic and its uses are very similar
to that of asafoetida (Laufer, 1919, p. 252). His reports from a 1610 Chinese source, using the transcribed
Arabic name mastaki, say that it is produced in Turkestan and used “as jiao” (Sichuan pepper), and that

53 Steingass, 1892, p. 42, https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/steingass_query.py?page=42.

54 Mastic, also known as tears of Chios is a resin exuded from the tree Pistacia lentiscus. The dried, yellowish, and translucent
brittle pieces of resin resemble teardrops, and they turn white when chewed, behaving like nature’s (initially bitter) chewing
gum. It is traditionally produced on the island of Chios, Greece.

55 OUP, n.d., asafoetida. 23. OUP, n.d., asafoetida.

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its odor is very strong, and that it is beneficial for digestion. Laufer, an expert in East Asian languages,
expects aza to come up in other oriental languages, but it seems to me that the problem of aza starts
with Latin and therefore should be searched within the medieval European scientific literature. If aza, a
Persian term for a dried resinous substance (i.e., mastic) loaned by scribes of Latin existed, why does asa
foetida, literally ‘stinking mastic’ for a foul smelling dried resinous gum sound so impossible? In fact, one
of the Arabic names for asafoetida literally translates to ‘the mastic of the giant ferula’; but here ‘mastic’
is likely to simply mean ‘gum.’
Asafoetida was first attested in Middle English, indicating its arrival in Europe. Sometime before
1398, we read: “Some stynkynge þinges beþ ydoon in medicyne, as ... brymston and asa fetida.”23 This
illustrious entrance of asafoetida immediately points out its stench, and it is paired here with
brimstone—once a synonym for sulfur, now a term chiefly used in a Biblical context in the description
of hell (cf. “fire and brimstone”)—is an apt foreshadowing of the nickname devil’s dung. It is also worth
noting that, in English, the word first referred to the material, with the sense of the plant producing
asafoetida appearing only secondarily: this is understandable, because no Europeans saw the ferula
plants until the seventeenth century, and the origins of the drug were obscure.

Etymology 6. English hing ‘asafoetida’, 1599 < Hindi hīng ‘asafoetida’ <
Sanskrit hiṅgu ‘asafoetida’; cf. cognates Sogdian ’ynkw < Proto-Iranian *aṅgu-
ǰatu- ‘resin-gum’; cf. Tokharian B, Khotanesea
a. OUP (n.d., s.v. hing); OUP (n.d., s.v. hing); Gharib (1995, p. 87); Adams (2013, p. 7)

India was always a big importer and consumer of asafoetida and also played a role in exporting
it to other parts of the world. Bombay served as the key port in the nineteenth century, where the stinking
gum would change hands (sometimes after a bit of manipulation and adulteration). Contrary to China
and Europe, Indians also developed an affinity for using it in their cooking. Thus, when the British came
in contact with asafoetida in India, they adopted the local name: hing.56 Hing comes from Hindi ह ग
ीं hīṅg,
through Sauraseni Prakrit hiṁgu from Sanskrit hiṅgu. 57 The Sanskrit term is believed to have

56 See Yule et al., 1903, p. 418.

57 AHD, 2022, hing.

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derived from an Iranian source reconstructed as Proto-Iranian *aṅgu-ǰatu- where ǰatu-58 is ‘gum’ (Modern
Persian ‫ ژد‬zhad ‘gum’), and other derivates are Tocharian B ankwaṣ(ṭ), Khotanese aṃguṣḍä, and Sogdian
*angužat (Adams, 2013, p. 7; Gharib, 1995, p. 87; R. L. Turner, 1962–1966, p. 281), also various Classical
Persian forms, both inherited, e.g., ‫ انگدان‬angudān, ‫ آنغوزه‬ānghuzah and borrowed, e.g., ‫ انگژد‬angužad
from Parthian (Tremblay, 2005, p. 438).
In English, hing is first attested in Hakluyt’s Principle Navigations (new ed.): “One hundred and
fourescore boates laden with Salt, Opium, Hinge, Lead, Carpets [etc.],” 59 and soon identified as a
substance identical to asafoetida, as an example from 1662 shows: “The Hingh, which our Drugsters and
Apothecaries call Assa fœtida, comes for the most part from Persia.”60
Among its many vernacular names in European languages, such as devil’s dung in English, there
is often a hint to the devil, possibly due to the connection between the smell of sulfur and hell in the
Biblical tradition (“fire and brimstone”). The name devil’s dung in its various glosses is popular among
European languages (e.g., German Teufelsdreck lit. ‘devil’s filth,’ Finnish pirunpihka lit. ‘devil’s resin,’ or
Turkish şeytanboku lit. ‘Satan’s shit,’ which shows the strong aversion this material induces in Europeans,
and why it never gained popularity in their cookery. Other vernacular names in English include devil’s
dung, asant, stinking gum (cf. George, 2012). At the far opposite, the phrase “food of the gods” on
Wikipedia actually links to asafoetida, because in an Indian context asafoetida was and is a desirable
ingredient. Garcia da Orta, a Portuguese Jewish herbalist and ethnobotanist pioneer who spent much
time in Goa wrote in the sixteenth century:

Well, you must know that the thing most used throughout India, and in all parts of it, is
that Assa-fetida, as well for medicine as in cookery. A great quantity is used, for every

58 Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *gʷétu ‘resin, gum.’

59 Hakluyt, 1589, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/searchresults?target=en&inContent=true&q=hinge&doc=Perseus%

3Atext%3A1999.03.0070.

60 OUP, n.d., hing, https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/87092.

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Gentio who is able to get the means of buying it will buy it to flavour his food. (Garcia da
Orta, 1563/1913, p. 44)

But he is a European, and so he notes on the next page: “The nastiest smell in the world for me
is Assafetida.”

Table 4.5 Various names for asafoetida in English

Species Name Source

Ferula assa-foetida et al. devil’s dung van Wyk (2014)
Ferula assa-foetida et al. hing van Wyk (2014)
Ferula assa-foetida et al. stinking gum Peter (2012)
Ferulaspp. asafoetida vanWyk (2014)

Arabic
Etymology 7. Arabic ‫ حلتيت‬ḥiltīt ‘asafoetida resin’; cf. cognates Hebrew
ḥiltiṯ < Aramaic ‫‘ܚܠܬܝܬܐ‬id.’a
a. Fraenkel (1886, p. 140); Löw (1881, p. 36) and Löw (1924, vol. 3, p. 452-455)

Arabic terms now make a difference between the material and the plant; asafoetida as a
spice/medicine is called ‫ حلتیت‬ḥiltīt, while the plant is called ‫ انجدان‬anjudān. The word ḥiltīt comes from
Aramaic ḥeltīṯā, and it also exists as a Hebrew cognate as ḥiltiṯ (Fraenkel, 1886, p. 140; Löw, 1881, p. 36;
Löw, 1924, vol. 3, pp. 452–455). It is first attested in Sibawayhi’s (ca. 760–796, a Persian native) al-Kitab
[The Book], which is the earliest work on Arabic grammar and linguistics. Ḥiltīt appears in the first Arabic
dictionary, the Kitāb Al-ʿAyn, compiled by al-Farāhīdī (ca. 786), simply sending the reader to al-anjudhān
‘asafoetida,’ which could mean that this word was more widely known than ḥiltīt at the time. Anjudān is
first mentioned in its earlier form ‫ انجذان‬anjudhān in the Kitab Al-ʿayn, which also tells us that the source
(uṣūl) of anjudān is a plant called maḥrūt, which also appears in the poetry of Imru’ l-Qays, the most

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eloquent poet of pre-Islamic Arabia.61 Arabic anjudān is a loanword from Persian, likely borrowed before
the sixth century, and it comes from the same Proto-Iranian *aṅgu-ǰatu- as Sanskrit, and later English
hing.

Etymology 8. Arabic ‫ انجذان‬anjudān < Persian ‫ انگدان‬angudān < Proto-Iranian *aṅgu-

ǰatu- ‘resingum’; cf. Tokharian B, Khotanesea
a. Lane (1863, pp. 79–80); Steingass (1892, pp. 114, 106); Adams (2013, p. 7)

Table 4.6 Various names for asafoetida in Arabic

Species Name Tr. Gloss Source

Ferula spp. ‫ أبو كبير‬abū kabīr Wehr (1976)
Ferula spp. ‫ أنجدان‬anjudān Baalbaki (1995)
Ferula spp. ‫ صمغ األجذان‬samgh al-anjudān gum of anjudan Baalbaki (1995)
Ferula spp. ‫ صمغ راتيناجي‬samgh rātīnājī rātīnājī gum Baalbaki (1995)
Ferula spp. ‫ حلتیت‬ḥiltīt Wehr (1976)

Chinese
Etymology 9. Mandarin Chinese 阿魏 āwèi MC /ʔɑ ŋʉiH/ ‘asafoetida’ < Tokharian B
ankwaṣ(ṭ) ‘asafoetida’ < Sogdian *angužat ‘asafoetida’ < Proto-Iranian *aṅgu-ǰatu-
‘resin-gum’a
a. Leung and Chen (2019); Laufer (1919, p. 353); Tremblay (2005, p. 438).

As for Chinese, 阿魏 awei is the term that gained wide prevalence in the seventh century (Leung
& Chen, 2019). It seems likely that it was Kuchean traders from around the Tarim Basin who first brought
asafoetida to Chang’an, the Tang capital on the eastern terminus of the Silk Road. The consensus now
among both Sinologists and experts on the languages of the Silk Road is that awei is a loan from
Tocharian B ankwaṣ(ṭ), originating from the same Proto-Iranian etymon as two of the above Arabic and
English examples (Laufer, 1919, p. 353; Baxter & Sagart, 2014, p. 121).

61 See Ibn Manẓūr, 1290/1979, p. 819.

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Etymology 10. Mandarin Chinese 興蕖/興渠/興瞿 xīngqú MC /hɨŋ ɡɨʌ/ ‘asafoetida’,

phonetic transcription < Sanskrit hiṅgu ‘asafoetida’ < Proto-Iranian *aṅgu-ǰatu-
‘resin-gum’; cf. Tokharian B, Khotanesea
a. Leung and Chen (2019); Laufer (1919, p. 353); Adams (2013, p. 7)

However, there existed an earlier name for asafoetida in Chinese: 興蕖/瞿/渠 xingqu, doublet
of 形虞 xingyu. These are direct transcriptions of the Sanskrit hiṅgu mentioned above, and they were
attested in fifth-century Buddhist sutras (Leung & Chen, 2019). It is also worth mentioning that in this
case, the Chinese monks most likely had no idea what exactly xingqu is, just that it was plant resin, and
thus it exemplifies the rare case in which the word precedes the thing it refers to. In the Bencao Gangmu
(BCGM), besides the names above, other synonyms can also be found. These are 阿虞 ayü, from the
transcription of Persian anguza(d), and 哈 昔 尼 haxini, the transcription of Ghazni, a city in
Afghanistan from which asafoetida was exported. In the Taiping Guangji (TPGJ) (citing the Youyang Zazu
(YYZZ), it is said that awei comes from the country of 伽闍那 MC /gaʑana/, which is likely a rendering
of Ghazna, a variant of Ghazni.62
Of all the names, the most successful was unquestionably awei: it enjoyed popularity for
centuries and was further propagated into Sinoxenic words of Japanese agi, Korean
awi, and Vietnamese ngui (Leung & Chen, 2019).
I highly recommend both Laufer’s Sino-Iranica (1919) and Leung and Chen’s “The Itinerary of
Hing/Awei/Asafetida across Eurasia, 400–1800” (2019), for those who are interested in asafoetida’s
journey and its names.

Table 4.7 Various names for asafoetida in Chinese

Species Name Tr. Gloss Source

Ferula spp. 阿虞 ayü Leung and Chen (2019)

Ferula spp. 哈昔尼 hāxīní Leung and Chen (2019)

62 CTP—https://ctext.org/taiping-guangji/414/awei?searchu=%E9%98%BF%E9%AD%8F&searchmode=showall#result

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Species Name Tr. Gloss Source

Ferula spp. 黑黎提提 hēilítí tí Rossabi (2013)

Ferula spp. 形虞 xíngyú Leung and Chen (2019)

Ferula spp. 興蕖/興渠/興瞿 xīngqú Leung and Chen (2019)

Ferula spp. 阿魏 āwèi Leung and Chen (2019)

Summary
And so, what we see here is that all three languages under scrutiny—English, Arabic, and
Chinese—have at least one word that goes back to the same Proto-Iranian etymon, from the geographic
source of the material it signifies and from the native region of the plant it is harvested from. This is not
a surprise, rather evidence showing that the words do follow the material, even with twists and turns,
and that tracing their journey correlates with the trade routes, thus marking the contact zones where
information about the material was transmitted.

Table 4.8 Conventionalized names for asafoetida in English, Arabic, and Chinese, found in dictionaries

Language Term Gloss Loan Source

English devil’s dung no OUP (n.d.)

English hing yes OUP (n.d.)

English asafoetida yes OUP (n.d.)

Arabic abū kabīr big father no Wehr (1976)

Arabic anjudān yes Baalbaki (1995)

Arabic samgh al-anjudān gum of anjudan no Baalbaki (1995)

Arabic samgh rātīnājī rātīnājī gum no Baalbaki (1995)

Arabic ḥiltīt yes Wehr (1976)

Chinese āwèi yes MDBG (n.d.)

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4.2.4 The Diffusion of Asafoetida

Figure 4.5 shows the linguistic diffusion of some of the names of asafoetida into English, Arabic, and
Chinese, according to available etymological data, marked with the approximate journey they took from
a Proto-Iranian etymon.

Figure 4.5 Diffusion of names for asafoetida, and their etymological stages in English,
Arabic, and Chinese.

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4.3 C A R DA M O M

⸙ 3. Cardamom

English: cardamom. Arabic: ‫ هال‬hāl; ‫ هيل‬hayl. Chinese: 豆蔻 dòukòu [bean-cardamom]. Hungarian:

kardamom.

Plant species: Elettaria cardamomum (L.) Maton (syn. Amomum cardamomum L.)
Family: Zingiberaceae
Part used: fruit (seed pods, capsules)
Region of origin: India
Cultivated in: Guatemala; India; Sri Lanka; Tanzania; Papua New Guinea
Color: green seed pods, brown seeds

Figure 4.6 Cardamom fruits cured, and powdered (Elettaria cardamomum). Credit:
Aromatiques

Cardamoms are the dried, ripe fruits of the cardamom plant Elettaria cardamomum. These fruits
are sometimes called seeds, but they are in fact the seed pods, “three-valved capsules” (vanWyk, 2014, p.
132), containing several brown-colored small seeds, as can be seen in Figure 4.6. The cardamom of
commerce is widely used in Asia as medicine and spice, and it is valued for its unique minty and
eucalyptus-like flavor. It is most prevalent in Indian cooking, but also known from the Arabic coffee
tradition where it is sometimes added to the beverage. Indian restaurants often place a bowl of
cardamoms at the entrance, so customers can take one as a masticatory on their way out, and chew on

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the refreshing capsules as nature’s breath mints. Native to the same region as the mighty black pepper
in India, cardamom is sometimes referred to as the “queen of spices” (Ravindran & Madhusoodanan,
2002, p. 1). Cardamom was imported to Europe since the Roman era, and it is still used in meat dishes,
sausages, Swedish meatballs, Danish pastries, ice-cream, and liqueurs (Mabberley, 2017, p. 326). It is the
third most expensive spice of our time, after saffron and vanilla (Business Insider, 2021).
Although cardamom usually refers to the fruits of E. cardamom from India—also sometimes
known as green cardamom and true cardamom—there are numerous other cardamoms, similarly
segmented capsule-like fruits used as spices and medicine in South, Southeast, and East Asia, and even
in Africa. Many of these belong to the Amomum genus of the ginger family (Zingiberaceae), such as the
black cardamom from the Himalayas (Amomum subulatum), and the round cardamom from Java
(Amomum compactum). See them in detail below in Section 4.3.3.

4.3.1 The Botany, Origins, and Cultivation of Cardamom

The cardamom plant is a tall perennial herb from the ginger family (Zingiberaceae), with pink white
flowers that grow at the base of the stem in clusters (van Wyk, 2014, p. 132). Elettaria cardamomum is
indigenous to the Western Ghats region in South India, the same area that gave us black pepper and the
center of its production and biodiversity (Ravindran & Madhusoodanan, 2002, p. 1). Together with black
pepper and ginger, it has been wild-harvested since time immemorial, and it formed the livelihood of
many from the beginnings of the ancient spice trade around the third century BC , until today (van Wyk,
2014, p. 132). Cardamom can grow only in a tropical climate, thriving in higher altitudes in the shade of
trees, similarly to black pepper (which is a climbing vine), and thus modern cultivation does not differ
much from traditional wild harvesting (van Wyk, 2014, p. 132). Cardamom is handpicked when ripe or
near-ripe one by one—explaining its relatively high price—and then dried. It generally comes in light
green, but one can also find them in white, which is a result of an extra step of steaming or bleaching
before the drying process (van Wyk, 2014, p. 132). From the 1920s, Guatemala gradually became a major
cardamom exporter, surpassing India in production. It is also grown in Tanzania and Papua New Guinea
on a small scale.

4.3.2 The History of Cardamom

It is difficult to trace the history of cardamom with certainty because of the confusion in nomenclature

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(Cumo, 2013). However, the cardamom described in fourth century BC in Indian Ayurvedic literature is
probably the green or true cardamom of today, called elā63 in Sanskrit. Cardamom was also described by
Theophrastus in the fourth century BC . He reports that kardamomon and amomon (cardamom and black
cardamom) come from Media, or according to some, from India—just like spikenard and most other
spices (Theophrastus, 1916, p. 249). Pliny connects amomum to North India, which is quite an accurate
source for black cardamom. Cardamom was known to Dioscorides and Hippocrates, who have both
written on its health benefits, e.g., aiding digestion. In Modern Greek, there is an informal way of saying
‘to strengthen, get strong’: καρδαμώνω kardamóno64 deriving from the name of the spice.
Medieval Arab doctors wrote about cardamom in similar ways, and the geographer al-Idrīsī
described ca. 1150 that it was brought to the port of Aden from Sindh, India, and China, whereas in China,
black cardamoms were important in the economy of the Song period (960–1279) (Prance & Nesbitt, 2005,
pp. 158–159). Green cardamom reached China from Southeast Asia; in Hong Kong it is consumed
primarily by the Indians and the Portuguese. It is cultivated in Guangdong, Guangxi, and Yunnan, used
in medicine rather than in cooking (S.-Y. Hu, 2005, pp. 325–326). For more on cardamom’s history, see
Dalby (2000, pp. 102–106).

63 Monier-Williams, 1899, p. 232.

64 https://www.greek-
language.gr/greekLang/modern_greek/tools/lexica/triantafyllides/search.html?lq=%CE%BA%CE%B1%CF%81%CE%B4%
CE%B1%CE%BC%CF%8E%CE%BD%CF%89&dq=

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4.3.3 A Crowd of Cardamoms: Identity and Confusion with Other Spices

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 4.7 False cardamoms: (a) Black cardamom from the Himalayas (Amomum
subulatum), (b) Chinese black cardamom or tsao-ko from Yunnan, China (Amomum
tsao-ko), and (c) round cardamom from Java (Amomum compactum). Credit:
Aromatiques, NAI

When it comes to cardamoms most of us are only familiar with one or two kinds; however, there
is a multitude of plant species that are harvested for their fruit known by their common names as some
kind of cardamom. All of these belong to Zingiberaceae. True cardamom—commercially the most
important species—belongs to the genus Elettaria, a name derived from the Tamil root elettari, meaning
cardamom seeds (Ravindran & Madhusoodanan, 2002, p. 1). Besides the genus Elettaria, “false”
cardamoms are found in two other genera: Amomum and Aframomum. Following van Wyk’s checklist
(2014, pp. 290–308), these are listed in Table 4.9.
Amomum65 is a genus home to a remarkable number of plants that yield pungent fruits and seeds,
the best known being Amomum subulatum. The Amomum genus consists of dozens of aromatic, spice-
yielding, and medicinal plant species primarily growing in India and China and elsewhere in tropical
and subtropical Asia, New Guinea, and North Queensland. Commonly called black cardamom or brown
cardamom, but also referred to by various other names in English, such as Nepal cardamom, greater
cardamom, Indian cardamom, Indian black cardamom, fake cardamom, Bengal cardamom, big

65 GBIF Secretariat, 2021, Amomum Roxb.

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cardamom, hill cardamon, and winged cardamom, the fruits of A. subulatum are larger than green
cardamom, and it is native to the eastern Himalayan region: North India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet. In
Hindi it is called baḍī ilāichī ‘big cardamom’ or kālī ilāichī ‘black cardamom.’ In
Chinese it is known as 香豆蔻 xiāngdòukòu ‘fragrant cardamom,’ and S.-Y. Hu (2005, p. 327) also reports
a local name in eastern Tibet for it: 嘎哥拉 gágēlā (ka-ko-la), which we will return to later. The dried
fruits of this plant (see Figure 4.7) are used in savory dishes of northern India and Pakistan and have a
heavy smoky aroma and camphor-like taste. The brown color is a result of roasting and smoking on open
fires (van Wyk, 2014, p. 132).

Table 4.9 Spice plants with a common name that includes cardamom from the Amomum genus in Asia
cultivated for their fruit and seed, and those from the Aframomum genus of Africa, cultivated for their
seed (van Wyk, 2014)

Species Common name(s) Region

Amomum aromaticum Bengal cardamom; Nepal card.; large card. Bangl.; Nepal
Amomum compactum⁑ Indonesian cardamom SE. Asia
Amomum costatum* Chinese black cardamom E. Asia
Amomum globosum round Chinese cardamom China
Amomum kepulaga⁑ round cardamom Trop. Asia
Amomum krervanh Cambodian cardamom; krervanh Trop. Asia
Amomum maximum Java cardamom Trop. Asia
Amomum subulatum brown cardamom; greater card.; Indian card. Asia
Amomum tsao-ko* tsao-ko cardamom; large cardamom Asia
Amomum villosum Malabar cardamom; Tavoy card.; wild Siamese card. Asia
Amomum xanthioides bastard Siamese cardamom; wild Siamese card. Asia
Aframomum alboviolaceum Cameroon cardamom Trop. Africa
Aframomum angustifolium Madagascar cardamom Madagascar
Aframomum daniellii bastard Melegueta; Cameroon cardamom Trop. W. Af.
Aframomum hanburyi Cameroon cardamom Trop. W. Af.

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Species Common name(s) Region

Aframomum corrorima Ethiopian cardamom; korarima Trop. NE. Af.
Aframomum macrospermum Guinea cardamom W. Af.
* Items identified as botanical synonyms by me.

There are even larger (black) cardamoms, growing in the mountainous Vietnam-China
borderlands, important in the cuisines of Vietnam, Yunnan, and Sichuan, such as A. tsao-ko66 (recently
renamed as Lanxangia tsao-ko (Crevost & Lemarié) M.F.Newman & Skornick.), which S.-Y. Hu (2005, p.
326) calls Yunnan cardamom, and explains that in Yunnan, it goes into the chicken soup whole, as a
flavoring agent. It is also used medicinally,67 and the scientific species name comes from the transcribed
Chinese name 草果 cǎoguǒ. In English it is called tsao-ko cardamom. S.-Y. Hu (2005, p. 326) distinguishes
an A. hongtsaoko Liang et Fang (red cardamom), which appears, after consulting botanical databases, to
be a synonym for A. tsaoko. If one searches for “red cardamom” online, spice vendors’ advertisements
appear, offering tsao-ko cardamom, also named “cao guo.” Putzel (2017) calls tsao-ko cardamom simply
black cardamom and explores its cultivation and trade in Yunnan in great detail. He explains that in the
last fifty years it has become a cash crop, and it is now the primary source of cardamom in Yunnan,
together with A. villosum,68 known as Tavoy cardamom, or 砂仁 shārén in Chinese (Putzel, 2017, p. 41).
Lastly, there are cardamoms that are round and white, indigenous to Southeast Asia. Amomum
krervanh (newly reassigned as Wurfbainia vera (Blackw.) Skornick. & A.D.Poulsen) is Siam cardamom,
Cambodian cardamom, or krervanh in English, and 白豆蔻 báidòukòu ‘white cardamom’ in Chinese. A.
compactum (newly reassigned as Wurfbainia compacta (Sol. ex Maton) Skornick. & A.D.Poulsen is known
as round cardamom, Indonesian cardamom, or Java cardamom in English, and 爪哇白豆蔻 Zhǎowā
báidòukòu ‘Java white cardamom’ in Chinese, a spice used in TCM, and botanically very similar to A.
maximum, which is 九翅豆蔻 jiǔchìdòukòu ‘nine-winged cardamom’ in Chinese. These are the first
cardamoms that were imported to China from mainland Southeast Asia, together with nutmegs that

66 https://herbaltcm.sn.polyu.edu.hk/herbal/caoguo

67 FoC—http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=2&taxon_id=240001100

68 https://herbaltcm.sn.polyu.edu.hk/herbal/villous-amomum-fruit

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caused an initial confusion, as we will shortly see. Cardamom in Indonesian is called kapulaga (Javanese
ꦏꦥꦸꦭꦒ kapulaga), primarily referring to A. compactum (more specifically kapulaga jawa ‘Javanese
cardamom,’ with an Old Javanese word69 that people on the Wiktionary try to connect with Sanskrit
kakkola.38 Wyk’s A. kepulaga is a synonym for A. compactum.
Moving on to Africa, the genus Aframomum70 contains around fifty species from the tropical
regions of Africa, including Madagascar, Mauritius, and the Seychelles on the Indian ocean. The most
important spice crop of this genus is Aframomummelegueta (grains of paradise, Melegueta pepper), and
A.exscapum (alligator pepper), and. staying on cardamoms: A. corrorima, commonly known as Ethiopian
cardamom, or korarima. The latter is also often referred to as false cardamom, because the structure of
the fruit imitates the true cardamom. One difference between the African and Asian cardamoms, is that
in Africa, mostly the seeds are used, while in Asia, the whole seed pods are made use of (van Wyk, 2014).
What is common to all these different spice plants spanning from Asia to Africa? What connects
them and makes us discuss them under “cardamom”? Their physical (and biochemical) properties. Not
only are these plants related botanically, but the anatomy of their fruits is quite similar. Consequently,
we can deduce that cardamom as a prototype has two features: (1) it is aromatic, and (2) it is a capsule
containing edible seeds. And just as cardamom is a prototypical object, cardamom—as a name—is a
prototypical word that is used and reused as a headword to propagate spice names. There is also a certain
dichotomy at play, in the dynamics of the adjectives that describe, distinguish, and evaluate a type of
cardamom. Think of: green vs. black, Indian vs. Nepal, lesser vs. greater, true vs. false.

Some remarks on common names

When combing through the literature of cardamoms, we find there is small degree of conflict and
overlap in the English common names that authors give to a plant and its spice. The vernacular names
contend with each other because authors come from different backgrounds, where one name might exist,
but another does not, and—as mentioned in the introduction of this paper—there are no rules
governing this; it is up to each author. Scholars such as van Wyk from South Africa, Ravindran and

69 Southeast Asian Languages Library (SEAlang)—http://sealang.net/ojed/index.htm 38. Monier-Williams, 1899, 241.

70 GBIF Secretariat, 2021, Aframomum K.Schum.

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Madhusoodanan from India, and S.-Y. Hu from China all bring a layer of diversity to the discussion of
spices with their mentions and omissions of various common names of the plants/spices they so
systematically try to present. This is to be expected, because, while writers with a botanical focus pay
attention to the strictly regulated scientific names in plant identification, sometimes the included and
excluded vernacular names they use are chosen on a whim, or depend on how much space is left on the
page. Some authors note just one common name, while some try to include all available. A more
interesting question would be: how do authorities on plant science go about the selection process?
Where do they gather the vernacular names from?
Often, botanical and gastro writers have to make up what I call “speculative names,” where an
author feels the need to devise/translate a common name for a plant that does not necessarily exist in
the target language they write. In this section, red cardamom is certainly a case in point. This is not a
judgment, rather an observation; sometimes these inventions come to life and begin their journey as
“real” plant/spice names that people will use if it fills a need. Further examples are found in Raghavan
(2007, p. 64), who calls allspice English spice in English, which is an obvious translation from other
languages that do in fact call it “English spice” (because the English fleet disseminated it from their
colony of Jamaica).

4.3.4 The Names of Cardamom

English
Etymology 11. English cardamom ‘cardamom’, (via post-classical Latin cardimomum, a.
1398), ?ca. 1425 < later also from Old French cardemome ‘cardamom’, ca. 1170; cf. modern
French cardamome < Latin cardamōmum ‘cardamom’, first century AD < Hellenistic
Greek καρδάμωμον kardámōmon ‘cardamom’, haplological κάρδαμ- kárdam- ‘cress’ +
ἄμωμον ámōmon ‘an Indian spice plant’, third century BC < Ancient Greek κάρδαμον
kárdamon ‘garden cress Lepidium sativum’, perhaps a loanword (many plant names
with -amon are clear loanwords; the suffIx -amon is known from Pre-Greek; ultimately
of uncertain origin), fourth century BC ; cf. cognates classical Latin cardamum <a
a. OUP (n.d., s.v. cardamom); TLFi (2012, s.v. cardamome); C. T. Lewis and Short (1879,
s.v. cardamomum); Liddell and Scott (1843/1940, s.v. καρδάμωμον); Liddell and Scott
(1843/1940, s.v. κάρδαμον); Beekes and van Beek (2010, p. 644)

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Table 4.10 Various names for cardamom in English

Species Name Source

Elettariacardamomum cardamom vanWyk (2014)

Elettaria cardamomum green cardamom Ravindran and Madhusoodanan (2002)
Elettaria cardamomum true cardamom Ravindran and Madhusoodanan (2002)

The word cardamom came from Latin cardamōmum via a Late Latin form attested in the late
fourteenth century, and it was later also influenced by French cardamome, which has the same Latin
etymon. Cardamōmum is the Latinized form of Greek καρδάμωμον kardámōmon, a word that was formed
by compounding the Ancient Greek κάρδαμον kárdamon ‘cress,’ which is of unknown origin, and ἄμωμον
ámōmon ‘amomum,’ signifying an unidentified Indian spice plant, formed with haplology
(*kardamamōmom).71 The OED also lists many other European cognates of the English word, such as
Spanish cardamomo (mid-thirteenth century or earlier), Italian cardamomo (late thirteenth century),
and Middle High German kardamōm (thirteenth century, modern German Kardamom). In some cases,
the form shows a dissimilation of the two final nasals, and so we can come across forms such as
cardamon.
Beekes and van Beek 2010 (p. 644) does not speculate on the origin of kárdamon, but explains
that plant names ending in -amon are clearly and frequently loanwords, and that the suffix -anon is a
known pre-Greek element. He also mentions some doubtful attempts to explain the word by previous
authors, and mentions that it has been connected with a Hittite word: karšani ‘an alcalic plant.’
Kárdamon was identified with the word ka-da-mi-ja,72 (kardamia as a feminine form of kardamon)
appearing on Mycenaean tablets listing spices in Linear B, excavated in the “House of the Sphinxes” in
the 1950s, and dated to the 1200s BC (Bennett et al., 1958, p. 107). Meaning ‘garden cress’ (Lepidium
sativum), of which the pungent seeds were consumed similarly to that of mustard and which was
popular in ancient Persia, it has been suggested that this is a Near Eastern Wanderwort, related to Middle

71 OUP, n.d., cardamom; AHD, 2022, cardamom.

72 Palaeolexicon—http://www.palaeolexicon.com/Word/Show/16764

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Armenian kotem ‘garden cress’, and Classical Persian ‫ كودم‬kūdim ‘a sort of plant (water-cress?)’
and Akkadian kudimmu(m) ‘a herb, perhaps cress.’73

Etymology 12. English amomum ‘any of several spices of genus Amomum, family
Zingiberaceae, including cardamom.’ An odoriferous plant. The Amomum of the
ancients not being certainly identified, the word was used with uncertain denotation
by earlier writers; a. 1398 < Latin amomum ‘amomum and a balm containing this spice’
< Ancient Greek ἄμωμον ámōmon ‘an Indian spiceplant, black cardamom (Amomum
subulatum),’ an Oriental loanword, cf. κιννάμωμον < Semitic ‘id.’; cf. cognates Classical
ܵ ܵ
Syriac ‫ ܚܡܡܐ‬ḥəmāmā → Arabic ‫ حماما‬ḥamāmā; Akkadian ḫamīmua
a. OUP (n.d., s.v. amomum); C. T. Lewis and Short (1879); Liddell and Scott (1843/1940)
and Beekes and van Beek (2010, p. 97); Löw (1881, p. 169), Lev and Amar (2008, p. 100),
and Roth et al. (1968/2004, vol. 6, p. 66)

As for the identity of Greek ámōmon (Latin amomum),74 it is one of the more perplexing ancient
spices. Although some consider it unidentified, the amomum of antiquity was probably what today we
call black cardamom. In the Liddel-Scott-Jones: A Greek-English Lexicon (LSJ) entry, it is defined as “an
Indian spice plant, prob.,” but nevertheless recognized as Amomum subulatum, “Nepaul cardamom.”75
Dalby (2000, p. 103) thinks that Linnaeus made a good guess about the identity of the spice plant when
he aptly named the Asian genus Amomum, in which several other spice-yielding plants discussed above
bear fruits known as “false cardamom” and “bastard cardamom.” The Greek word ámōmon is a loan from
Semitic languages whose further origin is uncertain, akin to Akkadian ḫamīmu, Classical Syriac ‫ܚܡ ܵܡܐ‬
ܵ

ḥəmāmā, Arabic ‫ حماما‬ḥamāmā,76 and Hebrew ‫ חֲםָ ם‬hămām, which are not re-borrowings from Greek
according to Löw (1881, p. 123). Denoting ‘a spice-plant,’ these are probably from the Semitic root h-m-m
‘to be hot’ (Klein, 1987, p. 222). Thus, determining the Greek word to be a loanword, just as in the case of
cinnamon, which is clearly marked as an “oriental loanword” in Greek etymological dictionaries.

73 cf. Kouyoumdjian, 1970, p. 371 ; Asatrian, 2012; Black et al., 1999/2000, p. L14.

74 C. T. Lewis and Short, 1879, amomum.

75 Liddell and Scott, 1843/1940, ἄμωμον.

76 cf. Roth et al., 1968/2004, vol. 6, p. 66; AHD, 2022, cardamom; Löw, 1881, p. 169; Lev and Amar, 2008, p. 100.

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If the most likely candidate for this “lost spice” is black cardamom, what happened to the name?
One of the last reports on it comes from 1834, when Edmund Roberts, traveling on a diplomatic mission
sent by United States president Andrew Jackson, listed items of Chinese trade lesser known in the West,
and among them: amomum. He notes in his account that amomum is a seed, with “strong pungent taste,
and a penetrating aromatic smell; […] used to season sweet dishes” (Roberts, 1837, p. 135), which can
easily describe any kind of cardamom people nowadays use. The term amomum is not used anymore; no
prevailing spice, seed, or medicinal herb today is called by that designation; however, the Latin name for
the genus Amomum from the ginger family (Zingiberaceae) carries on the name. The question of
amomum will come up again in the discussion of cinnamon’s origins in Section 4.4.4. Cardamom is also
referred to as the queen of spices, as can be seen in the title of Nair’s book (2011), Agronomy and Economy
of Black Pepper and Cardamom: The “King” and “Queen” of Spices, and we can come across green
cardamoms advertised using its Hindi name spelled in English: ilaichi/elaichi, especially in the locales of
the Indian diaspora. And so, reflecting on Table 4.10, which shows all the names using the headword
cardamom, we identified cardamom as a prototype word used in the propagation of other, related spice-
names.

Arabic
Etymology 13. Arabic ‫ هال‬hāl ‘cardamom’ < Persian ‫ هیل‬hil ‘the lesser cardamoms’ <
Sanskrit elā ‘cardamom’ < Proto-Dravidian *ēla ‘cardamom’; cf. Tamil ēlama
a. Wehr (1976, p. 1223); Steingass (1892, p. 1521); Dalby (2000, p. 104); Burrow and
Emeneau (1984, p. 87)

In Arabic, cardamom is known by many different names varying from dialect to dialect, but the most
common to come across in both modern and historical dictionaries is ‫ هال‬hāl or‫ هيل‬hayl. Hāl is from
Persian ‫ هیل‬hil ‘id.’ which goes back to a Sanskrit etymon, elā, which is ultimately a Dravidian
loanword, reconstructed as *ēla. In modern Arabic dialects, an occasional /l/ to /n/ sound change can be
observed, resulting in a version with a final /n/. Sometimes it is also prefixed by the word for ‘seed,’ as in
ḥabb al-hāl [cardamom seed], referring to true cardamom, hence the contracted modern Egyptian
Arabic ḥabhān. Hāl appears in Ibn Sīnā’s Canon of Medicine (1025), in a passage on how to prepare a

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concoction made with hāl (cardamom), qāqulla (black cardamom?), qaranful (clove), dār filfil (long
pepper), using one dirham (~3 gr) each.77

Etymology 14. Arabic ‫ قاقلة‬qāqulla ‘cardamom; black cardamom’ < Classical Syriac
qāqullā ‘cardamom’ < Akkadian (qa-qu-ul-lu.SAR) qāqullu
?
‘cardamom’ < Sanskrit takkola, kakkola ‘plant with aromatic berry; the
perfume made from it’; cf. Pali takkola; Tibetan kakolaa
a. Wehr (1976, p. 863); Löw (1924, vol. 1, p. 489); Zimmern (1915, p. 58); Monier-Williams
(1899, pp. 431, 241)

Whether we consult dictionaries, explore the spice terminology of modern dialects, or read
medieval travel writers, the word ‫ قاقلة‬qāqulla emerges often. This word is unmistakably a loanword,
indicated by its distinct, alien form deviating from the usual Arabic word patterns. It is first attested in
eighth-century medical literature. 78 In contemporary dictionaries it is usually glossed simply as
‘cardamom.’ If we look at the origins of names for cardamom in modern languages, qāqulla is not a
remarkably “successful” word; in terms of distribution, words originating in Greek surpass this and most
others. However, if we dig deeper, we will find that qāqulla is likely a prominent ancient Wanderwort,
possibly exhibiting a long journey in its history. Modern Turkish kakule is one of the few breadcrumbs to
hint that we are dealing with a regional Wanderwort. According to the Nişanyan Sözlük (NS), kakule is
attested in the fifteenth century and comes from Arabic whose etymon is Aramaic qāqūlā, a word going
back to Akkadian qāqullu, thus stretching our investigation to quite the time depth. 79 The Chicago
Assyrian Dictionary (CAD)’s only information on it is that it was a plant grown in the garden of
80
Merodach-Baladan II, a king of Babylon who ruled in the eighth century BC . The Arabic word later
entered the Latin vocabulary, and it survives today as the name for the genus Cakile.
Similarly to amomum, we are not entirely sure what Arabic qāqulla denoted in the past, but due

77 SkE.

78 SkE.

79 Nişanyan, 2022, kakule.

80 Roth et al., 1968/2004, Vol. 13, p. 124.

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to the fact that some medicinal recipes list both hāl and qāqulla as ingredients, we can be certain that
they denoted different materials. Furthermore, it is likely that, similarly to the word cardamom, qaqulla
was an umbrella term. Consulting Ibn Sīna confirms this approach: he distinguishes a greater and a lesser
kind of qāqulla, and describes their appearance, taste, and uses:

Qāqulla. Its nature: There are big ones and there are small ones. The big ones are like
small black walnuts [...] reminding the tongue of aromatic cubebs. The small ones are
like cloves in shape, and also aromatic. (Ibn Sīnā, 1025/1329)

In Amar and Lev’s work (2017, pp. 66–68), the big qāqulla is identified as Amomum melegueta [sic]
(grains of Paradise) with a question mark attached to it, while the small qāqulla is identified as true
cardamom E. cardamomum. I would argue with the first. Both items appear in the book of Ibn Rushd
(1126–1198), also known as Averroes.

Table 4.11 Various names for cardamom in Arabic

Species Name Tr. Gloss Source

Elettaria cardamomum ‫هال‬ hāl Wehr (1976)
Elettaria cardamomum ‫ خير بواء‬khayr buwwā’ good-scent Lane (1863)
Elettaria cardamomum ‫ قاقلة صغيرة‬qāqulla ṣaghīra small cardamom Amar and Lev (2017)
Elettaria cardamomum ‫ حب الهال‬ḥabb al-hāl cardamom-seed Baalbaki (1995)
Elettaria cardamomum ‫ حبهان‬ḥabhān cardamom-seed Wehr (1976)

Chinese
Etymology 15. Mandarin Chinese 豆蔻 dòukòu MC /dəuH həuH/ ‘cardamom’ [bean-
cardamom], compound of 豆 ‘bean(-like)’ + 蔻 ‘many; profusion’ (BCGM); or phono-
semantic matching (also written using 荳 ; it was confused with nutmeg at first), ca.
863 <? Middle Chinese 多骨 duōgǔ MC /tɑ kuət/ ‘round cardamom’ <? Pali takkola
‘Bdellium, a perfume made from the berry of the kakkola plant’ <? Sanskrit

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takkola, kakkola ‘plant with aromatic berry; the perfume made from it’; cf. Pali
takkola; Tibetan kakola; Chinese 嘎哥拉 gágēlāa
a. Donkin (2003, p. 22); Duan (ca. 860, 18:55); Pali Text Society (1921–1925, p. 292);
Monier-Williams (1899, pp. 431, 241)

In Chinese, the word equivalent to English cardamom is 豆蔻 doukou [bean-cardamom],

sometimes with a variant of the first character meaning ‘bean’ containing the grass radical 荳. As Donkin
(2003, p.22) points out, cardamom and nutmeg were initially confused in classical Chinese literature,
probably on account of their similar appearance and the fact that Chinese merchants imported both
from somewhere around mainland Southeast Asia, more specifically, from the Malay Peninsula. Initially
doukou referred to both spices (attested ca. 863), then, in later sources, nutmeg was distinguished as 肉
豆蔻 roudoukou, literally meaning ‘fleshy-cardamom.’
Doukou appears in ninth- and tenth-century sources such as the YYZZ and the TPGJ, as 白豆蔻
baidoukou [white-cardamom], reportedly called 多 骨 (MC /tɑ kuət/) from the land of 伽 古 羅
jiaguoluo (Kakola?), describing the round cardamom sourced from either Siam (Amomum kravanh) or
Java (Amomum compactum).81 This country refers to Kakola/Takola, a settlement on the western coast of
the Malay Peninsula, where cardamoms were marketed together with nutmegs from the Moluccas
(Donkin, 2003, p. 22). This word is said to be connected to Sanskrit takkola ‘a kind of perfume,’
kakkola ‘a kind of aromatic plant; and a perfume made from its berries,’82 a word that is the
proposed etymon for others, such as Tibetan kakola, referring to black cardamom, or Pali takkola.
The Pali word is given as ‘a perfume made from an aromatic berry,’ and also the name of a country.83 嘎
哥拉 gagela/kakola, a local name for red cardamom mentioned by S.-Y. Hu (2005), also fits in here.
Takola as a place name for a trading settlement on the Malay peninsula appears in Ptolemy’s Geography,
better known as “Golden Chersonese” in antique writings. For more on the mystery of Kakola, see
Wheatley (1961). It has not yet been established whether doukou derives from a foreign name, such as
the one reported in the YYZZ, or the phonological similarity is coincidental, but I hope an expert

81 Duan, ca. 860, 18:55.

82 Monier-Williams, 1899, pp. 431, 241.

83 Pali Text Society, 1921–1925, p. 292; Trenckner, 1879, p. 59.

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Sinologist one day will help me find the connection. I think it is a plausible assumption for the following
reasons: the character 蔻 kou does not appear in any other context or meaning, and, consulting the CTP,
the first mention is in a Tang dynasty poem about Jiangnan84 cardamom. The Nanfang Caomu Zhuang
(NFCM), traditionally dated to the fourth century BC , mentions cardamom, but the authenticity and
dating of this particular botanical treatise had been questioned for over a hundred years before (Ma,
1978). Moreover, the character itself seems to have been utilized on purely phonetic grounds, with the
attached grass/herb radical hinting at the new meaning (艹 cao ‘grass’ + 寇 kou ‘bandit’). I reckon that
the forms that supply both characters with the ‘grass’ radical are typically loanwords in the plant
kingdom, and the variant 荳蔻 doukou seems to support this. And, last but not least, Shi’s (2000, p. 40)
Hanyu Wailaici [Chinese Loanwords] directly tells us that it is an Arabic loanword, from “takur” [sic]. Sadly,
there is no Arabic word to the effect of takur, and I cannot guess what the author had in mind, but he
also connected it with the place name, Takola. Besides this publication, I could not find it in any other
etymological dictionary. The BCGM interprets doukou as ‘bean’ + ‘many; profusion’ (which does not
explain its use for nutmeg).
As it is based on Middle Chinese pronunciation, doukou cannot derive from Pali, and so it was
suggested to me to look into a Southern Min variant. A brief correspondence with a professor familiar
with Southern Min reconstructions did not exclude the possibility of a Minnan connection, calling it
“tempting” and stipulating that the Proto-Southern-Min reconstruction could be *tau-khɑu. But what
would be the etymon of a Minnan word? Arabic “takur”? He also pointed out that “the impact from
Proto-Min and its descendant Proto-Southern-Min to other Chinese dialects is very minor, taking into
account the geographical isolation of Fujian (where Proto-Min was spoken) during the ancient time,”
and hardly any common Chinese words originate from Min.85 I hope to pursue the tracking of doukou in
the future in order to offer a plausible hypothesis better than this.

84 Historical region of China south of the Yangtze river.

85 Email exchange with Prof. Bit-Chee Kwok.

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Table 4.12 Various names for cardamom in Chinese

Species Name Tr. Gloss Source

Amomumspp. 豆蔻 dòukòu bean-cardamom S.-Y. Hu (2005)
Elettaria cardamomum 綠豆蔻 lǜdòukòu green-cardamom Wikipedia (n.d.)
Elettaria cardamomum 青砂仁 qīngshā rén green-gravel-kernel Wikipedia (n.d.)
Elettaria cardamomum 小豆蔻 xiǎodòukòu little cardamom DeFrancis (2003)

Zhang and Unschuld (2015, p. 729) identifies 豆蔻 with Alpinia hainanensis K.Schum. (syn. Alpinia
katsumadai Hayata),86 a medicinal plant bearing round compact fruits, commonly referred to now as 草
豆蔻 caodoukou [herb-cardamom]. In modern TCM, doukou is either Amomum kravanh or Amomum
compactum 87 while the green cardamoms of Elettariacardamomum are designated as 小 豆 蔻
xiaodoukou [little cardamom]. Finally, the seeds of the greater galangal (Alpinia galanga88 are referred to
in Chinese as 紅豆蔻 hóngdòukòu [red cardamom]. See Table 4.12 for an overview.

Summary
To summarize, I have presented the way of cardamom in English; on the journey I was led into a byway
by the spice amomum, its etymology and possible identity. I have then presented a multitude of spice
names, propagated using the word cardamom as prototype. In Arabic, I have identified hal/hayl and
qaqulla as important words in the history of cardamom(s) in a Middle Eastern context, the latter term
possibly having an obscure but potentially remarkable history. According to authors such as Donkin
(2003), Sanskrit seems to be the origin of qāqulla and its cognates in the Near East, and there is a
possibility that Chinese doukou as well is a loanword from the same region: the Malay Peninsula, from
which the spices were sourced, and a country called Kakola/Takola. Product names derived from
toponyms are a well-known historical linguistic phenomenon (e.g., cologne, hamburger), but here the

86 https://herbaltcm.sn.polyu.edu.hk/herbal/katsumada-galangal-seed

87 https://herbaltcm.sn.polyu.edu.hk/herbal/round-cardamon-fruit

88 https://herbaltcm.sn.polyu.edu.hk/herbal/galangal-fruit

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connection between the Sanskrit plant name and the toponym Kakola is unclear and needs further
investigation.
Spice names found in general dictionaries can be consulted in Table 4.13, and Figure 4.8
illustrates the journeys I discussed above.

Table 4.13 Conventionalized names for cardamom in English, Arabic, and Chinese, found in dictionaries

# Language Term Gloss Loan Source

1 English cardamom yes OUP (n.d.)

1 Arabic hāl yes Wehr (1976)

2 Arabic khayr buwwā’ good-scent yes Lane (1863)

3 Arabic ḥabb al-hāl cardamom-seed no Baalbaki (1995)

4 Arabic ḥabhān cardamom-seed no Wehr (1976)

1 Chinese dòukòu bean-cardamom maybe DeFrancis (2003)

2 Chinese xiǎodòukòu little cardamom no DeFrancis (2003)

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4.3.5 The Diffusion of Cardamom Names

Figure 4.8 Diffusion of names for cardamom, and their etymological stages in
English, Arabic, and Chinese

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4.4 CINNAMON AND CASSIA

⸙ 4. Cinnamon

English: cinnamon. Arabic: ‫ قرفة‬qirfa [rind; bark]; ‫ دارصيني‬dārsīnī. Chinese: 錫蘭肉桂 xīlánròuguì [Ceylon-
flesh-cinnamon]. Hungarian: fahéj [tree-bark].

Plant species: Cinnamomum verum J.Presl. (syn. Cinnamomum zeylanicum Blume)

Family: Lauraceae
Part used: bark; leaf
Region of origin: Sri Lanka; SW. India
Cultivated in: Sri Lanka; Seychelles; Madagascar; India
Color: warm yellowish-brown, cinnamon

(a) quills (b) quills (c) leaves

Figure 4.9 Cinnamon quills and leaves from Cinnamomum verum.

Cinnamon is well-known around the world for its sweet aroma and flavor, and as one of the oldest spices
of commerce. It was a sought-after substance in rituals and traditional medicine systems of various
cultures, and today it is an essential spice in several cuisines, both Eastern and Western. Cinnamon has
maintained its level of demand ever since humans first traded it, and even in contemporary times it is
the second most important spice in the markets of Europe and the United States (including cassia
cinnamon), trailing behind only black pepper (Ravindran et al., 2004).
Cinnamon comes from the inner bark (cortex) of the tropical tree Cinnamomum verum J.Presl

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(syn. C. zeylanicum Blume),89 pieces of which are stripped and rolled into quills of several tightly packed
layers by skilled peelers in (mostly) Sri Lanka, where the plant is native. In a rare example, the literal
translations of the binomial names C. verum, meaning ‘true cinnamon,’ and C. zeylanicum, meaning
‘Ceylon cinnamon,’90 are used as common names for cinnamon in several languages.

⸙ 5. Cassia

English: cassia. Arabic: ‫ سليخة‬salīkha [peel; bark]. Chinese: 肉桂 ròuguì [flesh-cinnamon]. Hungarian:
kasszia(fahéj) [cassia (tree-bark)].

Plant species: Cinnamomum cassia (L.) J.Presl. (syn. Cinnamomum aromaticum Nees); et al.
Family: Lauraceae
Part used: bark; fruit
Region of origin: nan
Cultivated in: Indonesia; China; Vietnam; Timor-Leste; etc.

89 It is difficult to navigate between the hundreds of species and subspecies of cinnamon and their overlapping botanical
taxons and binomial synonyms, C. verum, for example, has fifty-one scientific synonyms, mainly a result of botanical history
and competing naturalists. In plant taxonomy, species often have dozens of scientific names called “synonyms.” If there is
consensus on the name within the scientific community, that binomial name (appended with the abbreviated name of the
person who coined it) will be marked as “accepted,” while the status of the other names will be “synonym,” or “unresolved.”
This is the product of the efforts of the last couple hundred years, when botanists tried to collect, describe, name, and
categorize plant life around the world. As the consensus changes with time, competing names can appear in the literature.
Botanical databases, such as the WFO and POWO, or specialized plant name checklists usually list all synonyms of a species
to help us orientate ourselves in the jungle of plant nomenclature. Synonyms (abbreviated as syn.) are only given if a plant is
known by multiple names in non-specialist literature, such as the case above.

90 Ceylon is the former name of Sri Lanka.

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(a) stick (b) powder (c) buds (dried unripe fruit)

Figure 4.10 Cassia sticks, powder,and “buds” from Cinnamomum cassia.

The phrase true cinnamon implies that there is a false cinnamon as well, and that would be cassia.
Cassia, also known as Chinese cinnamon, Chinese cassia, cassia cinnamon, and—somewhat harshly—
bastard cinnamon, is obtained similarly from the aromatic inner barks of closely related species,
especially Cinnamomum cassia (L.) J.Presl. (syn. C. aromaticum Nees), which is produced in Southeast
China and Vietnam. Although, to the uninitiated eye, seemingly very similar, the two spices are different
in many ways. Cassia is harder and coarser, and it is made up of a single layer of thicker rind that has
curled up in the heat of the day after harvesting, in the shape of a scroll. This is the cinnamon stick that
most of us are familiar with, and it is sufficiently hard to be capable of damaging a home grinder. It is
also a bit darker reddish brown in color and more pungent in flavor. Ceylon cinnamon, on the other hand,
is more fragile, slightly paler in color, and supposedly more delicate in taste because it offers a
combination of different essential oils besides cinnamaldehyde (the principal component responsible
for its aroma and flavor). Both are marketed in powdered form as well, and as such they are
indistinguishable, creating room for adulteration. Since the Europeans took over the cinnamon trade of
Sri Lanka and took over tapping the source of “true cinnamon” (first done by the Portuguese, who got a
foothold in the city of Colombo in 1518 together with trading concessions), there is a still ongoing notion
that cassia is an inferior product (Chennault, 2006). And this belief eventually became reflected in the
plant’s Linnaean name. A few cuisines also make use of the leaves (usually from C. verum), and the dried,
immature fruits called cinnamon buds (usually from C. cassia).

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There are a handful of other species that are cultivated as a source of commercial cassia, such as
C. burmannii (Indonesian cassia/cinnamon, Padang cassia, Batavia cassia, Korintje [cassia]), C. loureiroi
(Vietnamese cassia/cinnamon, Saigon cinnamon), and C. tamala (Indian cassia (lignea), Indian bark,
Malabathri bark), which is better known for its leaf as Indian bay leaf, malabathrum, or tejpat. As
reported in Ravindran et al. (2004, p. 10), C. loureiroi is extremely rare, and in actuality most of what is
known as Vietnamese cassia or Saigon cinnamon is in fact C. cassia, contrary to what is claimed in most
of the literature. This is supported by reports from botanists of French Indochina who insisted that
Saigon cinnamon is brought from the north by Chinese and Annamese merchants (S.-Y. Hu, 2005, p. 400).
S.-Y. Hu (2005) recounts a personal experience from the 1960s, regarding a professor of pharmacy’s
asking assistance in the identification of a cassia shipment from Hong Kong to the United States, stopped
at maritime customs. If the cinnamon specimens are from C. cassia, it must be sent back. If it is C.
loureiroi, it will be accepted. With no certain indicator or characteristics on the species, Dr. Hu’s team
made a decision “for humanitarian reasons” and opted for C. loureiroi. It is fascinating to look behind the
curtain and see how difficult it is sometimes to actually know the identity of plant products circulating
in global trade, and what decisions plant taxonomists must make. This is also a good anecdote to
demonstrate that, for the average consumer, the primary difference between these Cinnamomum species
is purely geographic. The reason behind the hesitation to accept cassia was presumably due to its high
coumarin content, a compound that is toxic in large quantities, and therefore cassia has often been
portrayed as the less healthy option (Dinesh et al., 2015).

Note 4.4.1. In this work, the word cinnamon usually refers to all products from the

species mentioned above—both cinnamon and cassia—following the everyday

common usage in language. However, where a distinction is made between cinnamon

and cassia, cinnamon refers only to C. verum, the “true cinnamon” of Sri Lanka, and

cassia refers to cassia of any source (China, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc.).

4.4.1 The Botany, Origin, and Cultivation of Cinnamon and Cassia

The plant itself, (C. verum) is a medium-sized evergreen tree in the laurel family (Lauraceae), with glossy
leaves, small white flowers, and oblong, acorn-like fruits (van Wyk, 2014, p. 104). New trees are propagated
from both seeds and cuttings; they are often multi-stemmed due to coppicing: the practice of chopping

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younger shoots to ground level to stimulate growth. Cinnamon is indigenous to Sri Lanka. Cultivation of
high-quality true cinnamon is historically important on the island of Sri Lanka, which is the main
producer and exporter to this day. It is followed by Madagascar and the Seychelles, with minute amounts.
Cassia (C. cassia) is believed to be native to the borderlands between northern Vietnam and southern
China, south of the Nanling mountain range, where the ethnic communities used its bark as medicine
and spice from “time immemorial” (S.-Y. Hu, 2005, p. 400). Some sources also mention Myanmar, but
others refute this (see Haw, 2017). Cassia of various kinds is widely cultivated now in many countries and
regions, including India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, and tropical and
subtropical provinces on the south of China: Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan, where it is
indigenous, and Fujian, Hainan, where it has been introduced (Chennault, 2006; Ford et al., 2019). It is
hard to find detailed statistics on production, because most indexes such as the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization Statistical Database (FAOSTAT) do not differentiate between true cinnamon and cassia
varieties. In any case, most of the world’s “cinnamon” is actually cassia grown on a large scale in
Indonesia, Mainland China, and Vietnam. I believe that it is impossible to discuss cinnamon without
including cassia as well, since the two are often interchanged—not only in discourse, but also in the
shelves of stores and in kitchens around the world. Popular spice compendiums often blend information
of cassia and cinnamon, or just ignore the distinction altogether.

4.4.2 The Identity of Cinnamon and Cassia

Cinnamon is often used as an umbrella term and includes both the true cinnamon of Sri Lanka and cassia
varieties of different origins. Cassia or cassia cinnamon is used as hypernym to refer to any cassia
(sometimes explained as a lesser quality cinnamon), unless there is a need to specify the exact variety
(e.g.: Indonesian cassia). There is a degree of perplexity between the two terms, and the material
cinnamon was, and still is, often confused with cassia. Evidently, the two products have a high degree of
resemblance and their methods of procurement are almost identical, so they are essentially the two
main varieties of a spice product made from aromatic tree bark. Confusion in terminology also arises
from the fact that while most of the European market differentiates between culinary cinnamon and
cassia, North America does not. In Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico, where the higher
quality—and definitely more expensive—true cinnamon is desired and preferred, sellers must indicate
if the product is cinnamon or cassia. Meanwhile, United States laws (or rather the lack of certain

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regulations) allow for cassia to be labeled and marketed as “cinnamon”; distributors are not legally
required to label their product accurately. Consequently, most of the cinnamon sold in the United States
is in fact cassia (Czarra, 2009, p. 124). Cassia is the main product of choice not only in the United States
and Canada, but also in South East Asia, and China as well, where it is a native spice (van Wyk, 2014, p.
104).
Different disciplines use varying levels of rigidity when it comes to the choice of names
cinnamon and cassia. Wijesekera and Chichester (1978) consistently refers to C. verum as cinnamon, and
to C. cassia as cassia, only discussing the cinnamon grown in Sri Lanka in their historical overview of the
cinnamon industry, calling it “genuine” as opposed to cassia, a “substitute for cinnamon” that was
flooding to London in large quantities starting from the second half of the nineteenth century, drastically
lowering the prices for cinnamon from Ceylon (Wijesekera & Chichester, 1978). The practice of
distinguishing the two as such is still commonly used and preferred among spice sellers, however one
can find studies where researchers use the name “cinnamon” as an umbrella term for several species (see
Rao & Gan, 2014), and it is not uncommon in everyday language use to confound the two, especially
when referring to cassia with the word cinnamon, as I mentioned above. The Handbook of Herbs and
Spices (Peter, 2012) discusses cassia (and other similarly used Cinnamomum species under the chapter
titled “Cinnamon”), indicating that even for industry professional circles, cinnamon is the bigger set,
usually referring to all species of the genus, even if there is no botanical hierarchy between cinnamon
and cassia. In short, it is customary to use the term cinnamon as a collective term, and only to make a
distinction between different kinds of cinnamon when it is necessary.
The notion that Ceylon cinnamon is “real” and “genuine” could not be more obvious than in the
botanical name C. verum, ‘true cinnamon’ in Latin, already explained. Dinesh et al. (2015) outright call
cassia “the fake cinnamon” and an “avatar” of true cinnamon (which is a truly creative witticism in an
Indian journal), clearly elevating cinnamon to being on a pedestal and treating cassia as a counterfeit
version of the former. Other articles with titles such as Bastard Spice or Champagne of Cinnamon?
question the value of specific products and reflect on our bias and tolerance toward a spice, which would
be a great discussion for marketing experts (see Derks et al., 2020).
This conveniently leads us to the topic of adulteration, which I will briefly mention. Numerous
academic articles explore methods to identify the botanical species from cinnamon samples, in order to

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verify origin and authenticate the quality of Cinnamomum spp. products, via analyzing chemical
compounds. This unique set of methods rose from the need to expose substances (cinnamon powder,
bark oil, leaf oil, etc.) in the spice industry, that are adulterated with other, cheaper, lower-quality species
purely for financial gain, representing an interesting interpolation of chemistry and geobotany into the
spice business (see Ford et al., 2019). Even more interesting is that the confusion in terminology is
evidently a problem in pharmacological experiments, as indicated by Oketch-Rabah et al. (2018).
The species prevalent in human consumption today can be seen in Table 4.14 (Kawatra &
Rajagopalan, 2015), with a minor source from additional species, such as C. tamala. According to Ulbricht
et al. (2011), true cinnamon (C. verum) and cassia cinnamon (C. cassia) are the only two species of the
genus that are approved medicinal herbs. The existence of an unrelated genus named Cassia in the pea
family (Fabaceae) should be noted as well to avoid confusion. This genus used to be a wastebasket taxon,
now containing many ornamental flowering plants, e.g., Cassia fistula, commonly known as “golden
shower.”
For a comprehensive account on cinnamon, cassia, and other economically important products
from the genus Cinnamomum, such as camphor, please refer to Ravindran et al. (2004).

Table 4.14 Cinnamomum spp. cultivated for commercial cinnamon and cassia, their common names
and native regions

Taxon Common name(s) Native habitat

C. verum cinnamon; true cinnamon; Ceylon cinnamon Sri Lanka

C. cassia cassia; cassia cinnamon; Chinese cinnamon S. China
C. burmannii Indonesian cinnamon; Batavia cinnamon; korintje Sumatra; Java
C. loureiroi | C. cassia Vietnamese cinnamon; Saigon cinnamom Vietnam

4.4.3 The History of Cinnamon and Cassia

During its several-thousand-year history of human use across various civilizations, knowledge and
understanding regarding the origins of this once highly priced product often involved confusion and

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mystery, and the uncertainty between cinnamon and cassia is just one of the reasons. While our
contemporary knowledge of the various cinnamon products and their sources makes these quite clear,
the identity of cinnamon and cassia used and described in antiquity is quite puzzling. Cinnamon has
been claimed to have been found in pharaonic tombs of ancient Egypt (see Meyerhof and Sobhy in al-
Ghāfikī, 1932, pp. 471, 475), and was mentioned by early Western authors such as Herodotus,
Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Strabo, and Pliny (Laufer, 1919, p. 541), and the poet Sappho. Haw (2017)
suggests that the assumption that the ancient and modern products are identical is problematic, and
that the cinnamon and cassia described by early Europeans were sourced from different species of
aromatic barks from Africa, and—as a plant taxonomist and historian himself—gives a hint as to a
probable candidate. “There is no good reason to believe that cinnamon and cassia were traded to the
western Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean region at any very early date,” he writes, even if others
claim the opposite, such as: “The much-discussed identification of the biblical kinnamon as
Cinnamomum has been clarified and confirmed by various scholars.” (M. Zohary, 1982, p. 202). In any
case, cinnamon is one of the oldest of spices, its history reaching back millennia. It is mentioned in the
Bible in the Old Testament, in Sanskrit texts, and in early Chinese materia medica.
It is said that the Chinese used it as early as the third millennium BC , and it reached the West in
the second millennium BC (Dietrich, 2004b), with evidence of Chinese poetry from the second century
BC (Dalby, 2000, p. 38). Archaeological discoveries from 2013 found 3000-year old cinnamaldehyde
residue inside elegant flasks in a Phoenician site at Tel Dor, modern-day Israel. The researchers stipulate
that cinnamon was used to flavor wine, and that this could be evidence for early trade in aromatics from
Southeast Asia (Namdar et al., 2013). Besides its traditional usage as a stomachic and carminative
medicine, aiding digestion and promoting appetite (still popular as such), it is a popular culinary spice
today (Ulbricht et al., 2011). However, this was not always the case; for example, in European antiquity
cinnamon was not used in food preparation, but rather was burned like incense as an offering to the
gods, sprinkled in the air as perfume, and mixed in healing decoctions and spiced wines. It was reported
by Pliny that after the death of Poppaea in 65 AD (at his hands?), her husband, emperor Nero, burned a
year’s worth of Rome’s supply of cinnamon on his young wife’s funeral (Counts, 1996). The earliest
mentions of cinnamon come from around the Mediterranean in sixth century BC . The Exodus, the
second book of the Bible traditionally attributed to Moses, contains the following paragraph:

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22
The Lord spoke to Moses, 23 “Take the finest spices: of liquid myrrh five hundred shekels,
and of sweet-smelling cinnamon half as much, that is, two hundred fifty, and two
24
hundred fifty of aromatic cane, and five hundred of cassia—measured by the
sanctuary shekel—and a hin of olive oil, 25 and you shall make of these a sacred anointing
oil blended as by the perfumer; it shall be a holy anointing oil. 26 With it you shall anoint
the tent of meeting and the ark of the covenant 27 and the table and all its utensils and
the lampstand and its utensils and the altar of incense 28 and the altar of burnt offering
with all its utensils and the basin with its stand; 29 you shall consecrate them, so that they
may be most holy; whatever touches them will become holy.” (Exodus 30:22–29)91

This is a good demonstration of how important perfume and ointments were in early Judaistic
rituals; while God is leading the Jews out of Egypt after the ten plagues, he methodically describes the
expected sacrifices and rituals. If rightly prepared, these aromatics have the power to turn the things
they touch sacred, and holy. Cassia appears in more mundane parts of the Bible as well, as in the Book of
Ezekiel the Hebrew prophet, to whom is attributed the authorship of the chapter around the sixth
century BC , gives his observations on the spice trade in Tyre (today on the coast of South Lebanon).

18
Damascus traded with you for your abundant goods—because of your great wealth of
every kind—wine of Helbon and wool of Zahar. 19 Vedan and Javan from Uzal[a] entered
into trade for your wares; wrought iron, cassia, and sweet cane were bartered for your
merchandise. (Ezekiel 27:18-20)92

In the chants of an unknown poet on a wedding, addressing a royal bride, cinnamon is

accompanied with myrrh and aloes (wood): “Your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia

91 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+30&version=NRSVUE

92 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel%2027%3A18%2D20&version=NRSVUE

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[...]” (Psalm 45:8).93 This is similar to lines in a poem about adultery showing that it was used as perfume,
sprinkled on clothes and linen, emanating beauty and attracting love seekers.

17
I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
18
Come, let us take our fill of love until morning; let us delight ourselves with
love. 19 For my husband is not at home; he has gone on a long journey.
(Proverbs 7:17)94

The Bible mentions cinnamon four times, three in the Old Testament and one in the New
Testament, and cassia four times, three in the Old Testament and one in the Apocrypha. Besides the
Bible, our most important source is Sappho (d. ca. 570 BC ), a Greek poet from Lesbos. On an imaginary
Troyan wedding she writes: “[...] and everywhere through the streets... wine bowls and goblets... myrrh,
cassia, and frankincense mixed together.” (Rayor & Lardinois, 2014, p. 49). Cinnamon appears in The
Histories of Herodotus, his 430 BC magnum opus about the Persian wars, which is considered the
founding work of Western historiography.

As for cinnamon, they gather it in an even stranger way. Where it comes from and what
land produces it they cannot say, except that it is reported, reasonably enough, to grow
in the places where Dionysus was reared. There are great birds, it is said, that take these
dry sticks which we have learned from the Phoenicians to call cinnamon and carry them
off to nests stuck with mud to precipitous cliffs, where man has no means of approach.
The Arabian solution to this is to cut dead oxen and asses and other beasts of burden
into the largest possible pieces, then to set these near the eyries and withdraw far off.
The birds then fly down (it is said) and carry the pieces of the beasts up to their nests,
while these, not being able to bear the weight, break and fall down the mountain side,

93 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2045%3A8&version=NRSVUE

94 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs%207%3A17&version=NRSVUE

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and then the Arabians come and gather them up. Thus is cinnamon said to be gathered,
and so to come from Arabia to other lands. (Herodotus, 430 BC /1921, p. 139)95

Besides these fabulous tales regarding the procurement of cinnamon, Herodotus explains that
the Greeks learned the name from the Phoenicians, and that the source of the product is from Arabia.96
Theophrastus (d. ca. 287 BC ) mentions cinnamon but remains vague about its origins (Arabia, Syria, or
India). In his Enquiry into Plants he included accounts of plants found outside of Greece, such as cotton-
plant, banyan, pepper, cinnamon, myrrh, and frankincense, based on the reports of Alexander’s followers
(Theophrastus, 1916, pp. xix, 323).
Arabia was the source of cinnamon not only in ancient times, but throughout the Middle Ages
as well. The Arabs used the tubular sticks as spice, as well as its leaves and unripe berries. They were
familiar with its medicinal values to “strengthen the stomach, liver and spleen,” and thought it to be
effective against scorpion venom (Dietrich, 2004b). Whenever the “real” cinnamon arrived to the ports
of the Red Sea, it was most likely at Aden (Dietrich, 2004b), one of the most important ports after the
eleventh century, but already important in the trade with India in the first century AD in the time of the
Periplus. Western authors doubtful of Sri Lanka’s early cinnamon enterprise often give very much later
dates for its export: fourteenth century (Dietrich, 2004b) or the 1770s (Aʿlam, 1994/2011, referring to
William Dymock), but we have Arabic eyewitnesses for the opposite. Buzurg ibn Shahriyār (ca. 900–
953/1908, p. 126) mentioned al-qirfat al-sahīlānīya “Sinhalese bark” on his travels. A native of Ramhormoz,
north of the port of Siraf (in today’s Iran), Buzurg ibn Shahriyār was a Persian ship captain; his Kitāb
ʻajāib al-Hind [The Book of the Marvels of India] is one of the most important sources we have on tenth-
century Indian Ocean trade: his travels and stories also inspired the tales of Sindbad. A century before,
a source (Ibn Khurdādhbih, ca. 870) also talks about cinnamon (dārṣīnī) as one of the economic products
sold on the Indian Ocean route. For the Europeans, the source of cinnamon remained a mystery until
the sixteenth century, and they had to buy it via Arab middlemen in Alexandria or elsewhere. In colonial

95 Hdt. 3.111—http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hdt.+3.111&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126

96 These mythical birds in Arabia are called “cinnamon gatherers” κινναμωμο-φóρος kinnamōno-fóros after Strabo and κινναμο-
λóγος kinnamo-lógos after Pliny, or just simply κιννάμωμον kinnámōmon after Aristotle.

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times, the cinnamon export was so important in Sri Lanka that in the Dutch period (1602–1796), the
colony’s coat of arms featured three cinnamon bales and an elephant holding a cinnamon branch
(Hartemink, 1995).
For further details on the history of cinnamon, I recommend Dalby’s Dangerous Tastes (2000).

4.4.4 The Names of Cinnamon and Cassia

English
Etymology 16. English cinnamon ‘cinnamon,’ (Middle English sinamome, synamome),
ca. 1430 < French cinnamome ‘cinnamon,’ (earlier cynnamome; also sixteenth century
cinamonde), 1211 < Latin cinnamōmum ‘cinnamon,’ first century AD < Ancient Greek
κιννάμωμον kinnámōmon ‘cinnamon’, later refashioned as kínnamon after Latin
cinnamum/cinnamon, which partly influenced the current English form (of Semitic
origin), fifth century BC ; cf. cognates Coptic ⲕⲓⲛⲛⲁⲙⲱⲙⲟⲛ kinnamomon < Semitic
*qnmwn ‘cinnamon’ (probably a loanword from a non-Semitic language); cf. cognates
Ancient Hebrew qināmōn; Judeo-Aramaic ‫ ܩܢܡܘ‬qnmw < ‘cinnamon’a
a. OUP (n.d., s.v. cinnamon); TLFi (2012); C. T. Lewis and Short (1879); Beekes and van
Beek (2010, p. 701); Klein (1987, p. 585); Rosół (2018)

Cinnamon, or more accurately one of its countless Middle English spelling variants among which
are sinamome or cynamom, was first attested in the fifteenth century (ca. 1430) and became relatively
more frequent in the following sixteenth century.97 It can be traced back to Ancient Greek and Hebrew
with certainty, but not further. According to the OED, the English term was loaned from French
cinnamome (attested in the thirteenth century as cynnamome),98 which comes from Latin cinnamōmum.
The Latin word is a direct borrowing from the Greek κιννάμωμον kinnámōmon (since the fifth century
BC ), which is in turn a Semitic loanword. According to Beekes and van Beek (2010, p. 701) (citing
Herodotus), the Greek word comes from Phoenician. Herodotus wrote in the third century BC that the

97 OUP, n.d., s.v. cinnamon.

98 Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé (TLFi)—https://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/cinnamome

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word kinnámōmon was “taught” to the Greeks by the Phoenicians (Herodotus, 430 BC /1921, p. 139),99 a
Canaanite Semitic-speaking seafaring people, originally from the Eastern Mediterranean, roughly
around today’s Lebanon. According to Klein (1987, p. 585), however, the Greek is a loanword from Hebrew,
and he observes that this word seems to be “of foreign origin.” Indeed, the Semitic root system does not
support this type of native word form, but we have no further attestation to the origins of the word.
Besides Biblical Hebrew qinnāmōn, Semitic cognates are also attested in Judeo-Aramaic
qnmn/qnmwn Samaritan Aramaic qynmwn and Syriac qūnnāmā (Rosół, 2018). The alteration of the
Greek word ending (kinnámōnon > kinnámōmon) is probably due to folk-etymology, modelled after the
phytonym ἄμωμον ámōmon ‘a spice plant’ (Beekes & van Beek, 2010; Klein, 1987).
Amomum is an spice of uncertain identity, featured in the writings of European antiquity but
which cannot be positively matched today. I have briefly introduced amomum in Section 4.3, explaining
that it most probably refers to black cardamom. Appearing in Pliny’s Natural History, it is “an aromatic
shrub, from which the Romans prepared a costly, fragrant balsam,”100 and for the Greeks it denoted an
Indian spiceplant: “Nepaul cardamom.”101 This brings up one of the popular theories one finds when
searching for the origins and explanations of the word cinnamon: that it is made up of the combination
of Κίνα Kína ‘China’ + ἄμωμον ámōmon ‘amomum,’ as in ‘Chinese amomum.’ This is somewhat analogous
to the plant’s Persian name dârčin ‘cinnamon’ (lit. ‘Chinese tree’), which is a Wanderwort that has spread
far, from South and Central Asia to the Balkans.
Another—seemingly rather far-fetched—theory is its presumed relatedness to Malay kayu
manis ‘cinnamon’ (lit. ‘sweet wood’). Even a Google search for the etymology of cinnamon powered by
Oxford Languages data returns Malay as a possible etymon. This speculation (probably on account of a
similar consonant sequence) seemed to gain some traction with a reference work of Biblical Hebrew and
Aramaic titled A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, commonly known as the Brown–
Driver–Briggs (see Brown et al., 1906/1939, p. 890). 102 “Prob. foreign wd., coming with the thing from

99 Hdt. 3.111—http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hdt.+3.111&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126

100 C. T. Lewis and Short, 1879, amomum.

101 Liddell and Scott, 1843/1940, ἄμωμον.

102 BDB—https://mg.alhatorah.org/Dictionary/7076

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remote E[ast]; cp. with Malay kainamanis by Röd, kāyü mānĭs Lewi [...]”—says this old dictionary,
referring to the material using the word “thing,” and guiding the reader further down the rabbit hole. As
I mentioned above, cinnamon is attested in the Old Testament in three places,103 among other spices,
incense, and perfumes. I think the logic of the authors lay in the fact that cinnamon was thought to be
imported to the Middle East at the earliest of times from East Asia, and that if anyone could afford exotic
spices coming through the hands of early Babylonian and Malay traders, King Solomon—who is
considered to be the author of several Biblical books—must be one. To sum up, we have no way of
knowing cinnamon’s origins for certain prior to Hebrew, only speculation.
Besides kinnámōmon, there is also κίνναμον kínnamon in Greek, a later, more rare form of the
former, appearing first in the writings of Pliny. The current English form is in part derived from the Latin
versions cinnamum/cinnamon refashioned after this.104

Etymology 17. English cassia, ca. 1000 < Latin casia ‘id.,’ first century AD < Ancient
Greek κασία kasía ‘id.’, sixth century BC < Ancient Hebrew qəṣîʿâ ‘a bark
resembling cinnamon, but less aromatic, so called from being stripped off,’ from qṣaʿ
‘to cut off, strip off bark’ (hapax legomenon in the Bible; Ps. 45:9)a
a. OUP (n.d., s.v. cassia); Rosół (2018); Beekes and van Beek (2010, p. 653); Klein (1987,
p. 589)

The English word cassia, similarly to cinnamon, goes back to Latin. Casia (rarely cassia) is a direct
borrowing from Greek κασία kasía, occasionally with double sigma: κασσία kassía.105 The Greek word,
appearing first in Herodotus’s writings, once again is “an oriental loanword” and often explained as ‘wild
cinnamon,’ comparable to Hebrew qəṣîʿâ and “Assyrian” kasîa (Beekes & van Beek, 2010, p. 653).
Although Beekes and van Beek (2010) indicates that the word originally is Austro-Asiatic, there is no
further elaboration there, and according to Welles (1934, p. 342) it is a Semitic loan-word. This conforms

103 Exodus 30:23; Proverbs 7:17; Song of Songs 4:14—https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=cinnamon

&version=NRSVUE

104 Hoad, 2003, cinnamon.

105 OUP, n.d., s.v. cassia.

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with the current popular theory that the source of the Greek term is the Hebrew word qəṣîʿâ, literally
meaning ‘peel’ i.e., “the peel of the plant, which is scraped off the tree” (Klein, 1987, p. 589). Qəṣîʿâ derives
from the root q-ṣ-ʿ, and this Semitic root means “to cut, cut off; to scrape,” which clearly refers to the
procurement of this spice, with the peeling off of the tree bark (Klein, 1987).106 Not everyone subscribes
to this inherited Semitic word theory, and there have been wild speculations that the Biblical Hebrew
word is a loan from Chinese 桂枝 guìzhī or 桂子 guìzǐ (which were not attested until the eleventh and
fourteenth centuries (Noonan, 2019, p. 197). This word is a hapax legomenon in the Hebrew Bible: it
occurs only once107 in the plural form (qəṣîʿōṯ), mentioned, in connection with myrrh and aloes, as being
used to perfume garments. It was probably prepared from the peeled bark of some cassia-like plant, as
the Hebrew word suggests. (Noonan, 2019, p. 196) is sure that the cassia in the Bible is a spice from Arabia
or Ethiopia, and not the cassia of today, trusting classical authors who state that it appears with other
Red Sea products such as myrrh and ivory, and at the port of Ophir. He also thinks that this word has to
be a loanword from a language in this region. Although, according to Klein (1987), a hapax legomenon,
qəṣîʿâ, also appears in Job 42:14 as a feminine proper name rendered usually as Keziah in English, given
to the second daughter of Job (probably named after the fragrant spice tree). If we search English
translations of the Bible, we find three occurrences of ‘cassia’ as an aromatic substance—in agreement
with The Septuagint (Greek Old Testament)—but two of these (Ex. 30:24; Ezek. 27:19) are translated from
the word ‫ ִָּקדִָּ ה‬qiddah, “of uncertain origin; prob. a foreign word”—writes Klein.108 In the Encyclopedia
Judaica (EJ), the three kinds of cinnamon are identified in the Bible and Talmudic literature, specifically:
(1) Cinnamon, Ceylonese; Cinnamonum zeylanicum [sic]; aromatic tropical spice tree; Ex. 30:23;
Prov. 7:17, et al. (2) Cinnamon, Chinese; Cinnamonum cassia [sic]; aromatic tropical spice tree; Ex.
30:24; Ezek. 27:19. (3) Cinnamon, Indo-Chinese; Cinnamonum laurei [sic]; aromatic tropical spice
tree; Ps. 45:9 (Feliks, 2007, vol. 16, p. 221).

106 Cognates are Aramaic qṭʿ, and Arabic ‫ قطع‬qaṭaʿa

107 Ps. 45:8—https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2045%3A8&version=NRSVUE

108 In Easton’s Bible Dictionary: “qiddah,’ i.e., ‘split.’ One of the principal spices of the holy anointing oil (Ex. 30:24), and an
article of commerce (Ezek. 27:19). It is the inner bark of a tree resembling the cinnamon (q.v.), the Cinnamomum cassia of
botanists, and was probably imported from India.”—https://www.blueletterbible.org/search/dictionary/viewto
pic.cfm?topic=ET0000734

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Both words spread in Europe significantly via Latin, and especially with the spread of
Christianity, through Medieval Latin. Words for cinnamon and cassia (cf. Musselman, 2012, p. 38) might
be among the few spice names to spread to places where the spice itself had not yet reached. For example,
cassia is attested in Old English and Middle English, but was not naturalized until the sixteenth
century.109 English names regarding cinnamon appear to be concerned with two things: place of origin,
and genuineness. Sometimes the semantics of these two overlap, especially if one is familiar with the
qualities and grades associated with the source of the cinnamon. For those who know what these
epithets actually mean, Chinese cinnamon should signify the same thing as bastard cinnamon, and Ceylon
cinnamon is the same as true cinnamon. For the rest, all these names would just fall in the category of
culinary cinnamon, and users can only infer further information from the meaning of the distinguishing
words (true, Ceylon, bastard, Chinese, etc.). The phrase bastard cinnamon is not in frequent daily use
anymore, but at some point it was important enough that it was explained in dictionaries.110 Attested in
1678, it was inspired by French †canelle bastarde, 111 and was born during an English translation of a
travelogue: “After the Dutch had disposses’d the Portugals of whatever they had in Ceylan, they cast their
eyes upon Cochin, in the Territories whereof grows the Bastard Cinnamon, which hinder’d the
utterance112 of Ceylan Cinnamon” (Tavernier, 1678, p. 88).
As the quotation shows, the phrase bastard cinnamon’s sole role was to stand opposed to
Ceylon/true cinnamon, and if we think about the European maritime powers vying for power at this time,
this dysphemism could be regarded as a negative marketing strategy as well: whoever owned Ceylon,
and thus the trade in real cinnamon, did not want others to have an attractive alternative supply from
around the corner.

109 Hoad, 2003, cassia.

110 cf. OUP, n.d., bastard cinnamon.

111 Coined in 1605 or before; now cannelle bâtarde.

112 The word utterance’s now obsolete meaning was: “the disposal of goods, commodities, etc., by sale or barter.”

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Arabic
Etymology 18. Arabic ‫ قرفة‬qirfa ‘cinnamon’ [bark, rind], from qarafa ‘to peel, bark,
derind’; Semitic root q-r-f (related to root q-l-f); cf. Amharic kerefea
a. Wehr (1976, p. 888) and Leslau (1991, p. 427)

In Modern Standard Arabic, cinnamon is known as ‫ قرفة‬qirfa, literally ‘rind, bark.’113 Qirfa is not
a modern word, though, thanks to literary Arabic’s rigid resistance to change, so we can easily recognize
cognates from the time of Classical Arabic and even before; e.g., Classical Syriac ‫ ܩܠܦܬܐ‬qlāp̄ tā ‘bark, peel,
Hebrew qəlippâ ‘id.’, and many others (see Leslau, 1991, p. 427). When Herodotus mentioned
cinnamon in his story about the giant cinnamon-gathering birds of Arabia
(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hdt.+3.111&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126
), he used the word κάρφος kárphea ‘dry stalk, dry sticks of cinnamon; twigs that birds use to build a
nest.’114 There is some speculation that this Greek word is a Semitic loan as well, but this is unfounded,
and Beekes & van Beek 2010 stays silent on the matter; the related kárō ‘to dry’ seems to be of Pre-Greek
origin. The wildest fantasies I came across tried to connect this word with a Dravidian etymon, musing
that this Semitic word might be a loanword from Tamil karuvā ‘cinnamon.’ However, in this
case the idea that the early Semitic root is related to the concept of peeling, attested in several languages
strongly goes against any idea of borrowing. In the Lisān al-ʿArab, al-qirfa is defined as dawā maʿrūf ‘a
well-known drug/medicine.’115

113 From qarafa ‘to peel, bark, derind’ (Wehr, 1976, s.v. qarafa); doublet of qilf and qulāfa ‘bark, rind,’ from qalafa ‘to strip the
bark of a tree.’

114 Liddell and Scott, 1843/1940, s.v. κάρφεα.

115 Ibn Manẓūr, 1290/1979, 3599.

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Table 4.15 Various names for cinnamon in English

Species Common name Source

Cinnamomum burmannii Batavia cassia van Wyk (2014)
Cinnamomum burmannii Indonesian cassia van Wyk (2014)
Cinnamomum burmannii Korintje cassia van Wyk (2014)
Cinnamomum burmannii Padang cassia van Wyk (2014)
Cinnamomum cassia bastard cinnamon OUP (n.d.)
Cinnamomumcassia cassia vanWyk (2014)
Cinnamomum cassia Cassia cinnamon Peter (2012)
Cinnamomum cassia Chinese cassia van Wyk (2014)
Cinnamomum cassia Chinese cinnamon van Wyk (2014)
Cinnamomum loureiroi; C. cassia Saigon cinnamon van Wyk (2014)
Cinnamomum loureiroi; C. cassia Vietnamese cassia van Wyk (2014)
Cinnamomum tamala Indian bark van Wyk (2014)
Cinnamomum tamala Indian cassia Peter (2012)
Cinnamomum verum Ceylon cinnamon van Wyk (2014)
Cinnamomumverum cinnamon vanWyk (2014)
Cinnamomum verum true cinnamon van Wyk (2014)

Etymology 19. Arabic ‫ دارصيني‬dārṣīnī ‘cinnamon’ < Persian ‫ دارچین‬dārchīnī ‘cinnamon’

[Chinese wood], from Persian dār ‘wood’ + cīn ‘China’; cf. cognates Sanskrit dāru (PIE
*dóru) < Pahlavi *dār ī čēnīg *dār ī čēnīg ‘cinnamon’, (cf. Armenian daričenik)a
a. Wehr (1976, p. 311); Dietrich (2004b); Aʿlam (1994/2011)

In Classical Arabic literature, however, one can find other names for cinnamon, and the most important
of these is ‫ دارصيني‬dārṣīnī or ‫ دار صيني‬dār ṣīnī, a loanword from Persian ‫ دارچینی‬dārchīnī (or ‫ دارچین‬dār-
i chīn), literally meaning ‘Chinese wood,’ seemingly referring to Chinese cinnamon. In Persian, dār is ‘tree;

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wood,’116 while chīn is ‘China’—arriving via Middle Persian chīn, via Sanskrit cīna, likely originating
from Old Chinese 秦 /*zin/, after the Qin dynasty of ancient China. The latter half or dārchīnī went
through Arabicization, rendering it ṣīn in Arabic.117 The -ī suffix makes the adjective: ‘Chinese.’
As a loanword in Arabic, the word dārṣīnī must have been confusing for some people, and less
so for others. After the eastward expansion of the Abbasid Caliphate consolidated, it was not uncommon
for native Persian scholars to work and write in Arabic. One Persian bureaucrat and postmaster, Ibn
Khurdādhbih (ca. 870, p. 71), writing in the ninth century in his Kitāb Al-Masālik Wa l-Mamālik, mentions
dārṣīnī, as one of the many products that were shipped to al-Sīlā [Korea] from other parts of East Asia.118
He does not give any explanation of the name, and in fact dārṣīnī is one of the least confusing of them,
which might indicate that for a Persian speaker, the meaning was trivial. On the other hand, Abū Ḥanīfah
al-Dīnawarī (d. 895), a Persian polymath also writing in Arabic, mentions dārṣīnī in his Book of Plants,
but he is quite confused about the term ṣīnī, which he associates with another (unindentified) drug
called ṣīnīn (AD -Dīnawarī, 1974, p. 210). According to the EI2, Isḥāḳ b. Sulaymān al-Isrāʾīlī (d. 955), a
scholar from Egypt, was the first to acknowledge that dārṣīnī comes from China.

Etymology 20. Arabic ‫ سليخة‬salīkha ‘cinnamon bark; cassia bark’ [peeled off,
stripped off], from salakha ‘to pull off, strip off; skin, flay’; Semitic root s-l-kh; cf.
cognates *a
a. Wehr (1976, p. 491)

Medieval Arabic pharmacognostic literature always makes a distinction between dārṣīnī and another
substance, ‫ سليخة‬salīkha,119 a term that has been associated with cassia (C. cassia) from early texts until
today.
If dārṣīnī and salīkha are not identical, dārṣīnī must be a cinnamon from another source. Could

116 PIE *dóru >

117 There is no, /Ù/, sound in Standard Arabic.

118 Also transcribed as Ibn Khordadbeh, he is the first Western author that mentioned Korea.

119 From salakha ‘to pull off, strip off; skin, flay,’ after the method of peeling off a tree’s skin; http://www.semiticroots.net/i
ndex.php?r=root/view&id=387

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it be the cinnamon from Sri Lanka? Documents from the Cairo Geniza show that Arab traders purchased
cinnamon from Ceylon in rather large quantities (e.g., sixty bags, each bag weighing one hundred pounds)
in around 1140, calling it qirfa sīlī ‘Ceylon(?) cinnamon’ (Goitein & Friedman, 2008, p. 375), and we can
presume it was the local product. I agree with Dietrich’s (2004b) opinion that the identity of the plant
source “cannot be established with certainty.” Lev and Amar (2008, pp. 143–144) suggest that the three
terms were used interchangeably, but in general dārṣīnī referred to both Ceylon cinnamon and Chinese
cassia, whereas qirfa was Ceylon cinnamon, and salīkha was Chinese cassia. This could be close to the
truth, but I would like to entertain Haw’s (2017) theory as well, who is convinced that “salīkha really refers
to the genus Cassia,” and to the Chinese cassia, and that Herodotus, Theophrastus, and Pliny were right
when writing that ancient “cinnamon” came from Africa, which Haw identifies with Cassia abbreviata, a
tree native to East and South Africa.
The other problem is that, according to our current understanding, Ceylon cinnamon was not
exported from the island until a quite late date, “hardly before the fourteenth century” (Dietrich, 2004b),
which agrees with the problems raised by Haw (2017). This sheds a cloud of uncertainty on the claim
that the ancient cinnamon mentioned by the Greeks, Romans, and Arabs is the same as the cinnamon
from Ceylon, and that what the Arabs knew and used early on was cinnamon from Asia or something
else.
In the writings of Dioscorides from the first century AD , both classes of κινάμωμον kinámōmon
and κασ(σ)ία kas(s)ía rind are listed, but he fails to mention their source (Aʿlam, 1994/2011). Muslim
writers translating the Greek works from the ninth century rendered the classes as dārṣīnī and salīkha
(Aʿlam, 1994/2011). Figure 4.11 shows a folio from a Greco-Islamic pharmacopoeia, where the heading
right under the red stroke says: ‫ قينامامون وهو الدارصيني‬qīnāmāmūn wa-huwa l-dārṣīnī ‘Kīnāmāmon,
which is cinnamon,’ shows that Arabic translators transcribed the Greek names for herbal remedies,
even when they had their own terminology. The Islamicate scholarly world was closely familiar with the
Greek works, and dārṣīnī seems to have indicated the same category as Greek kinnámōmon, and the
scholars knew a “whole range of kinds” of it.120 Ibn al-Bayṭār (d. 1248), an Andalusian Arab physician,
pharmacist, and botanist, heavily relying on the writings of Dioscorides and Galen, listed the different

120 For more on the Arabic transmission of Dioscorides’s Materia medica, see Gutas (2012)

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kinds of cinnamon known under the category of dārṣīnī in his Mufradāt, citing Isḥāḳ b. Sulaymān (Ibn
al-Bayṭār, ca. 1248/ 1874, vol. I/2, p. 83, dārṣīnī). Dietrich (2004b) introduces these products listed by Ibn
al-Bayṭār: Chinese cinnamon dārṣīnī al-ṣīn lit. ‘Chinese wood of China,’ an inferior kind called dār ṣūṣ,
the “real cinnamon rind” al-qirfa ʿalā l-ḥaqiqa, the “clove-rind” qirfat al-qurunful [sic], the “pungent
cinnamon” al-ḥādd al-madhāq lit. ‘the sharp of taste’, etc. The term dārṣīnī still exists in the Arabic
scientific name for the genus Cinnamomum, and as a colloquial term without an emphatic /s/;
‫(دارسين‬dārsīn) in some Khalījī (Gulf) Arabic dialects, where the Persian influence was always strong.
According to (Aʿlam, 1994/2011), some modern scholars have implied that ancient societies
sourced their cinnamon from China overland, due to the interpretation of the name, but citing Laufer
(1919)’s Sino-Iranica, there is no Sinological evidence to support this. I agree with the author here that if
cinnamon came from Asia, it must have arrived via the sea trade with South India and Lanka. Yūḥannā
bin Māsūya (d. 955), a contemporary of al-Isrāʾīlī, mentioned three kinds of qirfa: qirfat al-qaranful, the
best; qirfa that smelled like camphor; and qirfa that smelled like dārṣīnī (Aʿlam, 1994/2011).
Arabic names shown in Table 4.16, similarly to English, focus geographical origin and
genuineness, but also quality and grade. This shows us two things. First, people who were part of the
spice trade and had some knowledge of it were also concerned about the source of the real cinnamon:
it was not only the Europeans who were actively trying to go and find it some centuries later. Second,
there must have been several sources of “cinnamon.” It is not a secret that Arabia and neighboring East
Africa had aromatic trees and shrubs,: just think of myrrh and frankincense. It is not an impossible idea
that words such as qirfa and salīkha—which literally meant ‘rind’ or ‘bark’—were sourced
locally/regionally, and that these terms were also applied to similar products arriving from Southeast
Asia. As for dārsīnī, it is without a doubt an Eastern product. Terms, such as dārṣīnī al-ṣīn [dārṣīnī of
China/Chinese dārṣīnī], also indicate that it was a category, rather than a specific kind of product.

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Table 4.16 Various names for cinnamon in Arabic

Species Name Translit. Gloss Source

Cinnamomum cassia ‫ دارصيني الدون‬dārṣīnī al-dūn inferior cinnamon

Cinnamomum cassia ‫ قرفة صينية‬qirfa ṣīnīyya Chinese bark Wikipedia (n.d.)

Cinnamomum cassia ‫ سليخة‬salīkha peel, strip Wehr (1976)

Cinnamomum spp. ‫ الحاد المذاق‬al-ḥādd al-madhāq the sharp taste Dietrich (2004b)

Cinnamomum spp. ‫ دارصين‬dārṣīnī Chinese wood Dietrich (2004b)

Cinnamomum spp. ‫ دارصين الصي‬dārṣīnī al-ṣīn Chinese wood of China Dietrich (2004b)

Cinnamomum spp. ‫ قرفة‬qirfa bark, rind Wehr (1976)

Cinnamomum spp. ‫ قرفة القرنفل‬qirfat al-qurunful the bark of clove Dietrich (2004b)

Cinnamomum verum ‫ الدارصين عىل الحقيقة‬al-dārṣīnī ʿalā l-ḥaqīqa the real darsini Dietrich (2004b)

Cinnamomum verum ‫ القرفة عىل الحقيقة‬al-qirfa ʿalā l-ḥaqīqa the real bark Dietrich (2004b)
Cinnamomum verum ‫ القرفة األصلية‬al-qirfat al-aṣliyya the original bark Wikipedia (n.d.)

Cinnamomum verum ‫ القرفة السهيالنية‬al-qirfat al-sihīlānīya Sinhalese bark Aʿlam (1994/2011)

Chinese
The Chinese language does not have two different words for cinnamon and cassia. The term 肉
桂 ròuguì [flesh-cinnamon] is used, referring to the ‘cassia bark’ of C. cassia, often called just “Chinese
cinnamon” in English. Furthermore, one can come across 桂皮 guìpí [cinnamon-skin] ‘id.’, and S.-Y. Hu
(2005, p. 399) also lists 官桂 guānguì [official-cinnamon] ‘id.’ The latter makes sense if we imagine the
resemblance of the curled barks of cinnamon to the written scrolls of the officials (see Zhang &
Unschuld, 2015, p. 732). 桂心 guìxīn [cinnamon-heart] ‘id.’ refers to the inner bark specifically.121 Hu calls
all these products—which are native to the mountainous regions of Vietnam and China borderlands—
cassia, and she reiterates the notion introduced by (Ravindran et al., 2004) that Vietnamese and Chinese
cassia are the same, explaining that those that are exported from Saigon are called Saigon cinnamon in
English, while the others transported to the south to Guangzhou and Hong Kong “have the trade name

121 In case of some cassia varieties, the outer barks could be used as well.

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cassia” (S.-Y. Hu, 2005, p. 400). There is also 桂枝 guìzhī [cassia-branches] ‘cassia twigs,’ which is a
particular kind of cinnamon product unique to TCM, made up of the chopped-up young branches of the
cassia tree, and 桂子 guìzǐ [cassia-seeds] ‘cassia buds,’ referring to the fruits. As for the other cinnamon
products found outside of China, medicinal products from C. burmannii (root, bark, leaf) are called 陰
香 yīnxiāng [yinspice]122 (S.-y. Hu, 1980/1999, p. 179). if Sri Lankan cinnamon must be expressed, 錫蘭
肉桂 xīlánròuguì ‘Ceylon cinnamon’ is applicable.
In historical texts the character 桂 guì123 refers to cinnamon/cassia. The Sinogram of guì, Old
Chinese (OC) /*kʷeːs/, is a phono-semantic compound made up of semantic 木 ‘tree’ + phonetic 圭 OC
/*kʷeː/. The first instance we find in the corpus available in the CTP of guì is in the Liji, from the Warring
States period (fifth century BC –221 BC ):

曾子曰：「喪有疾，食肉飲酒，必有草木之滋焉。以為姜桂之謂也。」

Zeng-zi said, ‘When one during his mourning rites falls ill, and has to eat meat and drink
spirits, there must be added the strengthening flavours from vegetables and trees;’
meaning thereby ginger and cinnamon.124

Here too, we must be careful when identifying plants and plant products, because guì can also
be the sweet-scented osmanthus. In the past, guì marked both cinnamon species from the laurel family
(Lauraceae), and sweet osmanthus (from Greek osme ‘fragrant’ and anthos, ‘flower’), a fragrant flowering
bush with tiny white flowers common all around East and mainland Southeast Asia, frequently found in
city parks. Osmanthus (Osmanthus fragrans Lour.)—also called “sweet olive” and “tea olive” in English—
is a species in the olive family Oleaceae (Pearlstine, 2022, p. 191), and today it is referred to as 桂花 guìhuā
[osmanthus-flower] to make a distinction. The synonym 木犀 mùxi is said to come from the similarity
of the bark’s striations and the rhinoceros’s horn (Chennault, 2006); another name is 九里香 jiǔlǐxiāng,

122 From the feminine, dark,“negative” half of the yin and yang concept.

123 Sturgeon, 2021, s.v. 桂.

124 CTP—https://ctext.org/pre-qin-and-han?searchu=%E6%A1%82; translations from James Legge

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lit. ‘fragrant-for-nine-li.’125 Chennault (2006) uses reasoning along botanical lines to find out whether a
given line is about cinnamon or osmanthus. For example, if the guì-wood is used for temple-building, it
must be cinnamon (osmanthus is a shrub, less suitable for construction); if the verse talks about the
scent of white or red flowers, it is likely to concern osmanthus (only the bark and leaves are aromatic in
case of cinnamon, and cinnamon flowers are always white, as opposed to osmanthus, where some
varieties have orange/reddish flowers). Osmanthus is used to season tea, and it is an ingredient in
pastries. An alcoholic beverage called guihua liquor also uses osmanthus tincture to flavor rice gin (S.-Y.
Hu, 2005, p. 627). Osmanthus flower is important in Chinese culture—from legends, in poetry, and as a
Buddhist symbol—and it is associated with the Mid-autumn Festival. Chennault’s (2006) essay on the
identity of guì explores the use of guì in traditional—especially Buddhist—poetry, and it clears up the
confusion between cinnamon and osmanthus in a Chinese literary context. The character 桂 guì
appears in the Shuowen Jiezi and Kangxi Zidian dictionaries, as well as the BCGM, where it has been
identified as Cinnamomum cassia (Zhang & Unschuld, 2015, p. 732).
Chinese names are concerned with plant parts first and foremost. Even the modern Chinese
distinction between the two basic meanings of guì (cinnamon/cassia and osmanthus) happens with the
addition of other Chinese characters referring to the guì’s meat or flesh (also used for fruit pulp) if it is
cinnamon, or its flower if it is osmanthus. As it is a native spice of China, we will not find loanwords for
cinnamon.

Table 4.17 Various names for cinnamon in Chinese

Species Name Tr. Gloss Source

Cinnamomum cassia 桂 guì cassia DeFrancis (2003)

Cinnamomum cassia 桂皮 guìpí cassia-skin DeFrancis (2003)

Cinnamomum cassia 桂心 guìxīn cassia-heart S.-Y. Hu (2005)

Cinnamomum cassia 桂枝 guìzhī cassia-branches S.-Y. Hu (2005)

Cinnamomum cassia 桂子 guìzǐ cassia-seeds DeFrancis (2003)

125 Li is an ancient measure of length, approximately equal to 500 meters.

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Species Name Tr. Gloss Source

Cinnamomum cassia 官桂 guānguì official-cassia S.-Y. Hu (2005)

Cinnamomumcassia 肉桂 ròuguì flesh-cassia S.-Y. Hu (2005)

Cinnamomumverum 錫蘭肉桂 xīlán ròuguì Ceylon-flesh-cinnamon Wikipedia (n.d.)

Summary

Table 4.18 Conventionalized names for cinnamon in English, Arabic, and Chinese, found in
dictionaries

Language Term and gloss Loan Source

English bastard cinnamon yes OUP (n.d.)

English cassia yes OUP (n.d.)

English cinnamon yes OUP (n.d.)

Arabic salīkha peel, strip no Wehr (1976)

Arabic dārṣīnī Chinese wood yes Wehr (1976)

Arabic qirfa bark, rind no Wehr (1976)

Chinese guì cassia no DeFrancis (2003)

Chinese guìpí cassia-skin no DeFrancis (2003)

Chinese guìzhī cassia-branches no DeFrancis (2003)

Chinese guìzǐ cassia-seeds no DeFrancis (2003)

Chinese ròuguì flesh-cassia no DeFrancis (2003)

To summarize, the two English quintessential names that cannot be broken down into further
parts in English—cinnamon and cassia—are both loanwords arriving on similar pathways, and also
Wanderwörter. From the three Arabic words that play an important role here, two—qirfa and salīkha—

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are native Semitic words, while dārṣīnī is a borrowing from Persian, which is the source language for
many languages borrowing the name for cinnamon. As for Chinese, guì is the original Sinogram for
cinnamon, and all further words are compounded with this character. In Table 4.18, I list the names that
appear in modern dictionaries. One thing to notice here is that the farther we are from the source of
cinnamon and cassia geographically, the more likely it is that the name is a loanword.

4.4.5 The Contemporary Distribution of Spice Terms: The Case of Cinnamon

This section aims to give an overview of the terminology used by various languages when referring to
cinnamon. These words are connected to the spread of material culture, and a (not-so) specific plant
product used and coveted for its aroma, used as spice and medicine. Known by humans for millennia,
cinnamon is now present essentially on a global scale, and, by exploring its names in multiple languages,
we can reconstruct its linguistic genealogy. These results also tell a story: giving us an account of the
linguistic history of cinnamonic words, their origins, diffusion, and ultimately, the story of cinnamon. We
can infer information on the trade routes on which it was conveyed and the peoples who transmitted it,
and identify the cultures that used and diffused knowledge on it.
To those of us interested in the spread of words, especially Wanderwörter and their underlying
cultural, historical, and geo-political significance, the map of tea might come to mind. This is a map that
shows the journey of words for tea (either from Sinitic cha or Minnan te), and their distribution in a
sample of the world’s languages. The point of this map is that it clearly shows whether the name for tea
arrived by overland trade or via a sea route. This peculiar phenomenon is a feature on its own (138A) in
WALS, and it has been described in a chapter by Dahl (2013).126 Discussions and maps of the land vs. sea
distribution of tea terminology have since made it into popular science magazines and articles, done its
rounds on Twitter, and hence is relatively well known.127 On a more scientific note, the distribution of tea
words is discussed in detail in Mair & Hoh, 2009, in an appendix titled A Genealogy of Words for Tea (pp.
261–270), which includes a discussion on historical phonology.

126 The accompanying map is available online at https://wals.info/feature/138A#2/25.5/143.6

127 See for example Sonnad (2018) in Quartz: https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-land-and-sea-t o-

conquer-the-world/ or Netchev and Macquire (2022) in the World History Encyclopedia: https://www.worldhistory.org
/image/14112/movement-of-tea--cha-around-the-globe/

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Cinnamon as a spice is relatively common around the world, and the history of its diffusion goes
back thousands of years, with words attested as early as the Bible itself, as discussed in Section 4.4. This
is in contrast to the story of tea, in the sense that the international spread of tea is a relatively recent
process in the economic history of plant products and colonial powers, and so we have a much clearer
picture on the exact ways it was transmitted. Although tea-drinking in its homeland was practiced from
time immemorial, and trade allowed it to spread regionally on networks such as the Tea Horse Road, its
present global domination is a result of seventeenth-century European fascination and and the
establishment of large-scale shipping. While the tea map illustrates the long-haul trade connections of
the time, such as those between Europe and the Far East, the map of cinnamon shows traces of an older,
more gradual spread that happened in stages, outlining a more geographically contiguous development,
and incremental trade networks. The propagation of cinnamonic Wanderwörter mirrors the historical
processes, and, just as is the story of cinnamon, the words’ origins are sometimes obscured by the sheer
time-depth that is covered.

Methods
Informative geospatial visualizations such as Figure 4.12 are a powerful tool in conveying information
about the spread and distribution of words, and they can also help us to notice patterns and connections
faster and more easily than studying long tables of words, especially when the distributions are more
complex than the somewhat neat duality of tea. In this case study, I will attempt a classification of the
words for cinnamon by looking at clusters and categorizing them according to their source, to see what
the distribution of names today can tell us about the spread and history of cinnamon.
Because words for cinnamon or other spices are not included as features in balanced typological
datasets, such as WALS (tea is an exceptional feature in this database), I have attempted a manual
collection of words for cinnamon based on dictionary entries. As a starting point, I have crawled data
from the Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org), which is the closest resource we currently have to an
open- and crowd-sourced multilingual dictionary. Similarly to the Wikipedia, the Wiktionary is edited
and reviewed by the community, which has both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand,
information on the Wiktionary is free and broad in scope, usually represents the public consensus, and
is often well cited. On the other hand, it is not always complete, the available languages do not represent

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a balanced sample from a typological point of view, and the information can sometimes be ill-informed
or deprecated. But in any case it is a rich resource to start with.
For cinnamon, first I scraped the translations for the word cinnamon in the sense ‘spice’
(Wiktionary, n.d.-a), and cleaned the data using regular expressions. After this, I have performed a round
of manual checking where I fixed obvious mistakes in word forms and transliterations by consulting
other dictionaries and reference works, in the languages and scripts I felt competent in which to do so. I
proceeded to add a few missing translations with the help of other lexicographical resources and the
Google Neural Machine Translation engine’s Python API (Y. Wu et al., 2016).128 Then, I analyzed each
word in terms of etymological origin and assigned them to categories. For example, words derived from
Greek kinnámōmon, such as Lithuanian cinamonas or English cinnamon, constitute one category, and
words derived from Persian dârčin, such as Turkish tarçın or Hindi dālcīnī, make up another. I continued
this categorization for all instances, and I created a new category for every group that has at least three
attested members.
Instances that do not belong to any group or are undetermined were assigned to “other.” Finally,
I merged this dataset with language data obtained from the databases of both WALS (Dryer &
Haspelmath, 2013) and Glottolog (Hammarström et al., 2022) to prepare for geospatial plotting. The
datasets were handled using the pandas library in Python, and the visualizations were created using the
plotly Python library (McKinney, 2011; Plotly Technologies, 2015).

Results
Figure 4.13 shows the results of the analysis above, on a geographical scatter plot. As can be seen, there
are six groups in total: canela, kinnamon, korica, qirfa, darchin, and gui, with a seventh one—other—
containing those that do not belong to any of these. It is also noticeable that the groups that were
manually identified form geographical clusters, for example, the gui group appears in East Asia, while
the canela group is mainly found in Europe. Lastly, I would like to draw attention to the fact that the
“other” group has a high number of members in regions where cinnamon (or cassia) is native. The canela
group represent words that derived from Latin, the kinnamon group contains words going back to Greek,
and the korica group represents mostly Slavic languages. Qirfa words are derived from Arabic, darchin

128 https://pypi.org/project/googletrans/

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gathers terms from the Persianate world, and gui embraces some terms from the Sinosphere. Let us now
look at these categories one by one.

Note 4.4.2. The interactive plot can be rotated, zoomed in and out, and the groups of

data points can be isolated with a double-click on the group name/icon. Hovering over

a data point will bring forward further information on the term, its transliteration,

associated language and language family.

The canela group

Words belonging to this group are cognates of Spanish canela and its variants in Romance languages,
which have been formed with the diminutive of Latin canna ‘reed, cane.’ It is so named after the curled
shape of the cinnamon sticks resembling a little, hollow reed-pipe.129 Latin canna itself is a loanword
from Greek κάννᾱ kánna ‘reed, pole,’ which is probably a borrowing from a Semitic language (cf. Arabic
‫قناة‬qanāh ‘hollow spear, cane; conduit, canal,’ Hebrew qāneh ‘stalk, reed, cane,’ Aramaic ‫ ܩܢܝܐ‬qanyā
‘id.’130).101 According to Beekes and van Beek (2010, p. 636) the Greek word is from “Babylonian-Assyrian”
(Akkadian) qanû ‘reed’, which may come from “SumerianAkkadian” (Sumerian) 𒄀 gin ‘id.’
(cf. Roth et al., 1968/2004, vol. 13, p. 85), and proceeds to give Ugaritic qn and Punic qn’ as further Semitic
attestations.
The distribution of this group is overwhelmingly wide in Europe, which seems to echo the strong
influence of Latin vocabulary, especially in the developing Romance languages. One example would be
Old French canele (modern cannelle), which was formed within French from canne ‘cane,’ and first
attested in the first half of the twelfth century from an epic poem describing a fictional expedition of
Charlemagne to Jerusalem,131 and the local vendors selling cinnamon, pepper, and “other fine spices.”103
The TLFi explains that this word exists in most romance languages, so that it is impossible to determine

129 OUP, n.d., cannel.

130 https://cal.huc.edu/oneentry.php?lemma=qnh+N&cits=all 101. OED.

131 Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne [The Pilgrimage of Charlemagne], or Voyage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et à Constantinople
[Charlemagne’s Voyage to Jerusalem and Constantinople], (c. 1140). 103. TLFi, 2012, cannelle.

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its progress, and also notes that the medieval Latin is not attested in the ‘cinnamon’ sense. Either French
or Italian was the usual donor for other European languages: take for example Dutch kaneel, or Finnish
kaneli through Swedish kanel. Spanish canela is attested around 1250, from “Italian” (Medieval Latin)
cannella (Corominas, 1987, p. 125; Gómez de Silva, 1985, p. 98). Due to later colonization by European
powers, many of these terms spread elsewhere, e.g.: Tagalog kanela from Spanish, or Haitian Creole
kannèl.
†
Cannel, also earlier as canel, had entered English usage in the thirteenth century from French,
but is now obsolete. It existed in Early Modern English up until the eighteenth century, and was gradually
replaced by cinnamon (also arriving through French), which was first attested in the first half of the
fifteenth century (see Etymology 16). Neo Latin canella also appeared for a brief time, but its meaning as
‘cinnamon’ waned, and now it is used in botany to refer to a plant genus. In many other languages of
Europe the opposite happened, and an existing word from Greek was replaced by the Latin term. Even
Modern Greek uses kanéla, re(?)-borrowed from Italian cannella, instead of the Ancient Greek
kinnámōmon.

The kinnamon group

This group centers around Ancient Greek kinnámōmon, most possibly a loanword from a Semitic
language as I discussed in Section 4.4.4. Kinnámōmon is the source of words for cinnamon in many
European languages (e.g.: German Zimt, Lithuanian cinamonas, and English cinnamon), prominently in
Central Europe and the Middle East. In most cases, these words represent an area where words derived
from Latin cannella (or one of its descendants) did not replace the earlier word derived of kinnámōmon.
This group also contains South Slavic languages in the Balkan linguistic area (e.g., Slovenian cimet,
Serbian цимет cimet) where it arrived via the earlier German term Zimmet (now Zimt), and therefore it
diverges from West and East Slavic branches for this lexical item. It reached Southeast Europe in the
sixteenth century (Snoj, 1997, cimet)132, from which we can assume that cinnamon started to arrive here
from the West during this turbulent time in the Balkans, in the middle of the Ottoman Empire’s
European expansion.

132 Fran—https://fran.si/193/marko-snoj-slovenski-etimoloski-slovar/4285437/cimet?View=1&Query=cimet

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The korica group

The korica group contains languages that use words derived from the inherited Slavic lexicon, in this
case the East and West Slavic branches. Proto-Slavic *korica ‘bark’ is a derivative of *korà ‘bark’,133 and the
suffix -ica is diminutive. Old Church Slavic koricę meant ‘cinnamon,’ and further cognates are Russian
koríca ‘id.’, Ukrainian кори́ ця korýcja ‘id.’ (East Slavic), Czech skořice ‘id.’ (West Slavic). In other cases,
words derived from *korica can mean ‘bark, crust’ (e.g., Serb-Croatian) or ‘cover (of a book), binding’ (e.g.,
Bulgarian) (Derksen, 2008, p. 235). Due to the influence of Russian during Soviet times, some Central
Asian Turkic languages ended up with foreign words in their vocabularies, e.g., Kirghiz корица korica.

The qirfa group

The qirfa group contains languages from Africa and the Middle East, whose words for cinnamon were
borrowed from Arabic qirfa, for example Hausa kirfa (Newman, 2007, p. 114) and Amharic ቀረፋ qäräfa
(Leslau, 1996, p. 74).

The darchin group

Names for cinnamon in this category originate from Persian, as was explained in Section 4.4.4. According
to the data this cluster has the largest geographical extent, and by number of instances constitutes the
largest group, almost head to head with the group of canela. Darchin represents the earliest stage of
cinnamon’s westward spread from South, Southeast, or East Asia, depending which cinnamon or cassia
we think became the first cinnamon of commerce. Consulting the plotting on the map (see figure 4.13
below), we witness the huge influence Persian had in this step of transmission to the Middle East and
Central Asia. We can also see that central and north Indian languages use a loanword from Persian, which
can be explained by the Persianate134 societies that resulted from the Islamic conquest of India, starting
from the thirteenth century. The first sultan to ravage the land, Mahmud of Ghazni was a Persianized
mamluk Turk, who laid the foundations with his raids in the eleventh century for a series of Muslim
dynasties on the Indian subcontinent, culminating in the Mughal Empire (1526–1857) and what we
define today as Indo-Persian culture (Eaton, 2019, p. 33).

133 PIE *(s)kor- ‘to cut’ 106. Derksen, 2008.

134 For a discussion on this term, see N. Green (2019).

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The gui group

The gui group contains terms from the Sinosphere, words that borrowed the Sinogram 桂 gui (see
Section 4.4.4), such as Japanese 桂 kei ‘cinnamon or cassia tree,’ synonym with 肉桂 nikkei, Korean
gye as (桂皮) gyepi and (肉桂), and the Sino-Vietnamese quế. This shows that the Chinese
transmitted their cassia to their immediate neighbors east and southwest, together with the word and
character for it. However, there is little evidence for trade in cinnamon between China and Southeast
Asia in early history; G. Wang (1958) does not give any information on it in his “The Nanhai Trade: A
Study of the Early History of Chinese Trade in the South China Sea.” This makes sense if we remember
that all regions active in the South China Sea maritime trade—from Guangdong to Sumatra to Lanka—
had their own sources of cinnamon, and traders would only transport it westward.

Others
We can see that the category of “others” is prevalent in areas where cinnamon of various kinds is native
and therefore these languages often have native words to refer to it. Many words from this group are
derived from the meaning of ‘tree bark, skin, peel’ Malay/Indonesian kulit kayu manis [bark-wood-sweet]
‘sweet wood bark,’ where kulit ‘skin, bark’ is often omitted, or Dhivehi fonithoshi [sweet-bark]. Hungarian
fahéj [tree-bark] is made by compounding and was attested in ca. 1395 (Zaicz, 2006, fahéj), and
Romanian scorțișoară,135 is perhaps modeled after Slavic *korica.

Conclusion
So what does this tell us exactly? It shows that the modern state of spice terms’ distribution is neatly
arranged according to the influential languages that spread the name for particular material, pointing to
certain civilizations which used, traded, and carried it, and which had great influence over their
neighbors. In the future, I hope to extend this approach to other spices, as it would be fascinating to
compare the data of many different items and their distribution patterns.

135 Diminutive of scoarță ‘bark,’ from Latin scortum ‘hide, skin,’ PIE *(s)ker- ‘to cut..’

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Figure 4.11 Cinnamon tree in a tenth-century Arabic translation of Dioscorides’s De

Materia Medica, a manuscript at the Oriental Collection of the University Library of
Leiden (Shelfmark: Or. 289). This copy is from Samarkand and dates to 1083, the time
of the Karakhanids (Dioscorides, 1083, f. 9a).

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Figure 4.12 Distribution of words for tea from Sinitic cha and Minnan te, based on
the data around the globe, from the WALS dataset.

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Figure 4.13 Distribution of words for cinnamon in a few languages around the globe.
For a full, interactive, and explorable version of the plotting, please visit the following
link: http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https: //github.com/partigabor/phd-thesis-
viz/blob/main/distribution_cinn amon.html

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4.5 B L AC K P E P P E R AND LONG PEPPER

⸙ 6. Pepper

English: pepper; black pepper. Arabic: ‫ فلفل‬filfil, fulful; ‫ فلفل أسود‬fulful aswad [black pepper]. Chinese: 胡椒
hújiāo [barbarian-pepper]; 黑胡椒 hēihújiāo [black-barbarian-pepper]. Hungarian: bors [pepper]; fekete
bors [black pepper].

Plant species: Piper nigrum L.

Family: Piperaceae
Part used: fruit
Region of origin: Malabar coast (South India)
Cultivated in: Vietnam; Brazil; Indonesia; India; Sri Lanka; etc.
Color: black; white; green

Figure4.14 Black pepper from the Malabar coast in India, white pepper from the
PenjaValley in Cameroon, and green peppercorns. Piper nigrum. Credits: Aromatiques.

Black pepper is the dried fruit (drupe) 136 of the species Piper nigrum. Pepper fruits are often
called peppercorns, and they come in black, white, green, and even red. However, black pepper, white
pepper, green and “true” red peppercorns are not different varieties: they are the fruits of the same plant.

136 A type of fleshy fruit with thin skin and a single, central pit containing the seed, also known as a “stone-fruit” (e.g.: plum,
cherry, peach, nutmeg, olive, mango). It is a term used to denote the contrast to a botanical “berry,” which contains many
seeds (e.g.: blueberry, grape).

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Their difference merely lies in the harvesting and drying process. All of them have a unique, pungent
taste and a fresh, spicy aroma that they release when being crushed or ground.
Black pepper is the most important, most popular, and most consumed spice in the world
(Mabberley, 2017, p. 721). Valued for its pungency and flavor, pepper has been used since ancient times
in traditional medicine and gastronomy from East to West, and it is the most influential spice to have
shaped human history. It is found and used virtually everywhere around the globe (Hill, 2004, p. 253),
and most of us are familiar with the biting sensation it causes on the tongue and in the nose. Black
pepper was one of the first aromatic substances used medicinally in India, and one of the first products
of global commerce to be traded, alongside long pepper, and ginger. It was transplanted to other tropical
regions of Asia early on, and cultivated extensively. Black pepper’s early diffusion is remarkably
interesting, and it is the prototype spice for many of us. Referred to simply as pepper from here on, it was
among the first oriental spices to reach the Occident (Peter, 2012, vol. 1, p. 86). Pepper was known to the
ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans in the West, and it changed medieval Europe. It was even used
as currency in small amounts. Today it accounts for more than a third of all spices traded in the world,
making it the most traded spice as well (Ravindran, 2017b). Its importance is well demonstrated by the
many books and monographs about its history (see Shaffer, 2013; Wernick, 2014), agronomy (see Nair,
2020; Ravindran, 2000), and appeal (see Barth, 2019; De Kerros, 2016).

Note 4.5.1. Throughout this work—unless stated otherwise—the term pepper alone

always denotes the pepper(s) of Piper nigrum, of the genus Piper, from the pepper

family (Piperaceae) originating in India (i.e., black pepper, white pepper, etc.). This is

to make an arbitrary distinction with the various kinds of hot chile, or chili peppers of

the genus Capsicum in the nightshade family (Solanaceae), native to the Americas. A

partial objective of this work is to untangle the messy nomenclature around these plant

and spice names, which is evident if we take into account all the different items we can

refer to with the words pepper in English, jiāo in Chinese, and filfil in Arabic; a situation

true of many other languages as well.

Uses
Black pepper had and has various uses in multiple areas. Nowadays, we mainly consider its importance

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in the culinary arts—seasoning food in the kitchen and also in the dining table—but it is extensively
used in the food industry as well for flavoring and preserving processed foods (Peter, 2012, vol. 1, p. 86).
Often called the “king of spices,” black pepper is ubiquitous and so well-known in cooking that it is
essentially pointless to list cuisines and dishes that feature it. It is present in practically all savory dishes,
sauces, marinades, and pickles. It is used whole, crushed, or ground, and its role in Western gastronomy
is well marked by the fact that virtually all restaurant tables host a pair of salt and pepper mills or shakers.
However, white pepper is a key ingredient in French and Chinese cuisine, where it is much more popular
than black pepper, while green pepper is popular in Thai and South Indian cooking. But besides just a
seasoning, pepper also has roles in perfumery and beauty care, not to mention its use as a home remedy
(Ravindran, 2000, p. 467). In fact, as is true for most spices, pepper in the past was considered primarily
a medicine. Black pepper is well known in the traditional herbal systems, whether Ancient Greek,
Ayurvedic, or Traditional Chinese Medicine, as well as contemporary pharmacology and phytotherapy
(a modern name for chemistry-assisted herbalism). Reviews and updates on the research of Piper nigrum,
its active components, and their effects on human physiology are being published at a steady pace (see
Butt et al., 2013; Haq et al., 2021; Meghwal & Goswami, 2013; Srinivasan, 2007). Recent scientific research
shows that piperine displays numerous pharmacological effects, such as antimicrobial and antioxidant
(Haq et al., 2021). It is therefore not surprising that health benefits of black pepper have been recorded
in pharmacopoeias since ancient times, and that it has been used for the treating of various illnesses,
ranging from stomach pains and digestive problems to fever, cold, and even food poisoning (Quattrocchi,
2014, p. 2952).

4.5.1 Long Pepper and other False Peppers

There are other aromatic, spice-yielding plants (other kinds of peppers, if you like) in the Piperaceae
family, constituting several different species, such as cubebs, tailed peppers, or Java peppers (Piper
cubeba), (Indian) long peppers (P. longum; P. retrofactum), “piper chilies” (P. chaba), Ashanti/Benin
pepper (P. guineense), etc., and they will be referred to using these common names throughout. Cubeb,
and long pepper especially, were common in ancient times but virtually disappeared from the global
spice trade in the modern age. Long pepper is the most important relative of the black pepper, and as a
commercial product it comes from two sources: the Indian long pepper (Piper longum), and Javanese
long pepper (Piper retrofactum). The latter is sometimes also called Balinese long pepper or Indonesian

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long pepper Peter (551 2012, vol. 2). Other, less common spices unrelated to the Piper genus, such as pink
peppercorns from South America (Schinus molle; S. terebinthifolia), Sichuan peppers from East Asia
(Zanthoxylum spp.), and alligator peppers (Aframomum danielli) from Africa are sometimes referred to
as “false peppers.” These will always be referred to with their usual full vernacular names to avoid
confusion.
⸙ 7. Long Pepper

English: long pepper. Arabic: ‫ دارفلفل‬dārfilfil. Chinese: 蓽撥 bìbō. Hungarian: hosszú bors [long-pepper].

Plant species: Piper longum L.; P. retrofactum Vahl

Family: Piperaceae
Part used: fruit
Region of origin: E. Himalaya to S. China; Indo-China
Cultivated in: India; Indonesia; Thailand
Color: green to red when ripe, dark brown when dried

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 4.15 Various “false peppers”: long pepper (Piper longum), cubeb pepper (Piper
cubeba), and pink peppercorns (Schinus terebenthifolius). Credits: Aromatiques.

4.5.2 The Botany of Black Pepper

Pepper is native to the Malabar region in South India, where the Western Ghats, a mountain range
parallel to the coastline, traps the monsoon rains. This results in the most humid region in India, making

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it one of the plant biodiversity hot-spots on Earth (Ravindran, 2000, p. 1). Often called the “king of spices,”
pepper originates here in the evergreen tropical forests of Kerala, which is the origin and center of plant
diversity for the “queen of spices” as well: cardamom (Ravindran, 2000, p. 1). Wild populations of pepper
and closely related species grow in the moist, shady forests, up to 1200 m above sea level (Ravindran,
2017b). Pepper was cultivated for thousands of years in these areas, and at one time South India was the
only place that produced it. Due to the human desire for this valuable spice, the crop was slowly
transplanted from here to other tropical zones, mainly in the Asia-Pacific: Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia;
but also to the West as far as Madagascar and Brazil. Today it is cultivated in twenty-six countries
(Ravindran, 2000). The top five producers in 2020 were Vietnam, Brazil, Indonesia, India, and Sri
Lanka.137 Pepper grows on a perennial vine, blooming with a cluster of small flowers on hanging spikes,
producing young, round fruits that are first green, turning to bright red as they ripen, resembling berries.
Pepper plants in their native habitats spread on the forest floor, or climb over rocks, shrubs, and trees.
Pepper prefers the hot tropics with high humidity, and optimal temperatures of around 20–30°C. Open
cultivation is possible in places where rainfall is well distributed (e.g.: Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia),
whereas in India shade is required because of the six months of drought between monsoon seasons
(Ravindran, 2017b). Wild pepper species are dioecious,138 having male and female individuals, while the
domesticated pepper populations became monoecious: 139 one plant is both male and female. This is
probably due to thousands of years of selective multiplication, and it has led to greater quantities in
production: bisexual flowers mean high fruit yields (Ravindran, 2000, p. 38). Pepper lianes are
propagated from cuttings, and, being climbers, they are usually grown around trees for live support, or
with the use of artificial poles (van Wyk, 2014, p. 216).
When it comes to harvesting, the techniques are different depending on the intended end
product. In the case of black pepper, the near-ripe (still green) fruits are handpicked and sun-dried in

137 In order of production quantity, from highest to lowest. All production data is from FAOSTAT (Food and agriculture data
of the Statistics Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations): https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home;
license: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

138 Bot.: the male and female reproductive organs are found in separate individuals.

139 Bot.: having both the male and female reproductive organs in the same individual; hermaphrodite.

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the course of several days up to two weeks. Oxidization leads to the darkening of the pericarp140 (the
outside skin and flesh of the fruit) to a hue ranging from deep brown to jet black, while also attaining
the signature wrinkles and dimples (Hill, 2004, p. 254). The drying process can be sped up by boiling the
pepper fruits in hot water for a short time. Chemical changes induced by the heat hasten the subsequent
oxidization process, which causes the outer layer to gradually shrivel and blacken while drying (van Wyk,
2014, p. 216). White pepper is obtained by letting moisture and micro-organism dissolve the cellular
tissue of the fully ripe red fruits, basically letting them rot in a technique called retting. The fruits’
decomposed skin and flesh are easily removed by hand or machine after soaking and gentle washing,
and the remaining pale seeds are then dried in the sun, or bleached (van Wyk, 2014, p. 216). Green
peppercorns are a result of traditional pickling, or in modern times rapid freeze-drying of the unripe
fruits as a way to prevent fermentation. This process results in a product with a light weight and
seemingly higher price. Occasionally the ripe, red fruits are sold as well to be used fresh, but the “true”
red peppercorns—as Hill (2004) calls them—are rare and mostly found in producing areas: they lose
their vigour within days of harvest and so must be used fresh unless preserved in vinegar or brine. As it
is a hallmark of spices, the two varieties that are dried (black pepper and white pepper) are much more
known worldwide, and their dry quality allows them to be transported on longer journeys. If we think of
white pepper as de facto decorticated black pepper, we would rightly guess that the flavor of white
pepper is weaker than black pepper, as the outer peel of black pepper contains much of the spicy
compounds responsible for the heat. Green peppercorns have an even milder taste and a much shorter
shelf-life. Indigenous to the Malabar coast, a well-known and popular variant is the Malabar pepper or
Malabar black, a commodity sought after by traders since Roman times (De Romanis, 2020). Another
famous name on the market is the Tellicherry black, which according to spice traders is not a regional
designation, but rather a requirement of size. If a peppercorn is larger than 4.25 mm pinhead, it is
classified as Tellicherry (Eirinberg, 2021). Other famous and/or protected pepper variants with
Geographical Indication (GI) certificates are Kampot pepper from Cambodia, the Muntok white and
Sarawak white from Indonesia and Malaysia respectively, and the Penja pepper from Cameroon. A
relatively recent publication by pepper grower and merchant De Kerros (2016), accompanied by

140 Bot.: In fruit anatomy, pericarp is the collective name for the outer layers around the seed of a fleshy fruit or drupe: the
endocarp (innermost covering of the seed; the pit), the mesocarp (flesh), and the exocarp (skin).

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remarkable photographs, aims to present all the dozens of pepper varieties around the world that are
available to those with an adventurous taste. Pepper owes its punch to the alkaloid piperine, while the
wrinkly pericarp supplies the complex spicy aroma and flavor, thanks to a high number of chemical
compounds in the form of volatile oils (Ravindran, 2000, p. 467), the most powerful one of which is
rotundone, a highly potent compound also found in Shiraz wines (C. Wood et al., 2008). For more details
on the botany, chemistry, cultivation, agronomy, and other aspects of black pepper, please refer to Nair
(2011), Parthasarathy et al. (2008), and Ravindran (2000).
According to Mabberley (2017, p. 695), the following common names refer to the species Piper
nigrum: pepper, black pepper, Madagascar pepper, and white pepper. Excepting the green peppercorns
mentioned above, other spices, such as the Sichuan peppers from China, pink peppercorns from Brazil,
and Guinea peppers (Aframomum melegueta) from tropical West Africa are different, often botanically
unrelated species, only connected by their names and similar uses, looks, or flavor profiles.

4.5.3 The History of Black Pepper

The history of pepper accompanies the history of mankind from the earliest times of contact and
exchange between civilizations. The story of pepper is global and must travel to Ancient Egypt to begin.
According to a popular anecdote in books and articles about pepper, peppercorns were used in the
embalming process of mummies (Ravindran, 2000), and they were found in the nostrils of Ramses II (J.
Turner, 2004, p. 168). I have read this on many occasions, and I have spent way too much time trying to
find out whether this is true or not. In short, I think there is no definitive answer: the peppercorns alleged
to have been in Ramses II’s body were only “seen” through X-ray, and the original reports are dubious at
best, as reported by Bucaille (1990, p. 206). Ramses II died in 1213 BC , and even if these specifics were
problematic, it is said that peppercorns and cinnamon were imported “from Southeast Asia and the East
Indies” and thus available to wealthy citizens of Egypt as early as New Kingdom era (sixteenth century
BC –eleventh century BC ) (Salima, 2001/2005, p. 394).

Pāṇini, the famous Sanskrit grammarian (ca. fourth-sixth centuriesBC ) recorded the use of
pepper in spiced wine, and pepper appears in early Indian medical texts of Suśruta as well (Ravindran,
2000). In the fourth century, Theophrastus recorded and described both black pepper and long pepper,
and by the first century AD its source was accurately described by Pliny the Elder, who stated that black

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pepper is from south and long pepper is from north India. Rome conquered Egypt in 30 BC , and with
that the pepper trade as well, which was a key enterprise contributing to Rome’s later financial success.
From here onward, the history of pepper within the Indo-Roman trade is well studied and documented;
for further details, please see De Romanis (2020), Miller (1969), and Sidebotham (2011).
During the late Middle Ages, pepper also brought great riches to Europe, and the former wealth
of Venice was due to its trade. Following the crusades, European sea powers tried to get hold of the
monopoly of the spice trade. Vasco de Gama’s landing near Calicut in 1498 was significant in the era as
the Venetians, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English vied with each other, a rivalry continuing for
centuries, up to the modern era. The story of pepper is very well explored in the Age of Exploration as
well, and there is no need for me to delve into it deeper. I recommend Shaffer (2013) for those interested
in the big picture, but the sections about pepper in Dalby (2000) and J. Turner (2004) are also well
researched.

4.5.4 The Names of Black Pepper

English
Etymology 21. English pepper <? West Germanic *pipor ‘id.’ < Latin piper ‘black pepper,
long pepper’ < Ancient Greek πέπερι péperi ‘id.’ < Middle Indo-Aryan pipparī
‘long pepper’ < Sanskrit pippali ‘long pepper Piper longum (plant and berry); a
a
berry’
a. Bosworth and Toller (1898/2014), R. E. Lewis et al. (1952–2001), and OUP (n.d.);
Harper (n.d.); C. T. Lewis and Short (1879); Liddell and Scott (1843/1940); Sheth (1923–
1928, p. 599); Monier-Williams (1899, p. 626)

The word pepper arrived in modern English via Middle English peper and Old English pipor, piper,
from an early, Proto-West Germanic borrowing of Latin piper.141 The Latin word comes from Greek πέπερι
péperi, a word “of oriental origin”142 or “Indic origin.”143 The ultimate source is most probably a Middle

141 OUP, n.d., pepper.

142 Hoad, 2003, pepper.

143 AHD, 2022, pepper.

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Indo-Aryan language, with a word akin to Prakrit pipparī, 144 probably via Pahlavi (Middle Persian),145
ultimately from Sanskrit pippali or pippalī.146
As for the meaning, we know that in Latin the word piper was used for both black pepper and
long pepper, and that this is true for the Greek word as well. As long pepper gradually disappeared and
was completely replaced by black pepper in the Middle Ages, with it vanished that sense of the word.
The original word’s meaning, however, was exclusively long pepper: pippali did not refer to black pepper.
In Monier-Williams (1899), pippali is ‘long pepper,’ while pippalī refers to ‘a berry; Piper longum (both
plant and berry).’ The Sanskrit word for ‘black pepper’ was marica,147 attested in the Suśrutasaṃhitā,
the foundational text of Ayurveda. Hindi-Urdu /‫ مرچ‬mirch is the most obvious descendant of the
Sanskrit word, and it is similar in meanings to the word pepper in English today: by itself it rather refers
to chili, while with a distinguishing word, it refers to black pepper (i.e., kālī mirc [black pepper]). The use
of both black and long pepper in India can be dated to ancient times, as Ayurvedic texts compiled in
Sanskrit, such as the Suśrutasaṃhitā testify. Together with ginger (śṛṅgavera in Sanskrit), these three
spices are a base combination in traditional Indian medicine, the name for which is trikaṭu ‘three
spices.’
The ancestors of English speakers adopted the word during the Anglo-Saxon period, before they
arrived in England, and so its cognates are found in other West Germanic languages as well.148 As for the
term peppercorn, attested in early old English, it is a compound of pepper and corn in its previous sense
‘grain,’ and it is used to refer to a single piece of the pepper fruit. Many other names of black pepper
actually refer to varieties and cultivars, e.g., Malabar pepper, Kampot pepper, and the above-mentioned
Tellicherry black.

144 Sheth, 1923–1928, p. 599.

145 Harper, n.d., pepper.

146 Monier-Williams, 1899, p. 628.

147 Monier-Williams, 1899, p. 790.

148 Cresswell, 2021, pepper, p. 123. OUP, n.d., longpepper.

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Table 4.19 Various names for pepper in English

Species Name Source

Piper nigrum black pepper van Wyk (2014)
Piper nigrum green pepper OUP (n.d.)
Pipernigrum pepper vanWyk (2014)
Piper nigrum peppercorn OUP (n.d.)
Piper nigrum white pepper OUP (n.d.)

Etymology 22. English long pepper ‘long pepper’, eOE; cf. cognates Anglo-Norman as
poivre lonc (13th cent.; Middle French, French poivre long) and also Middle Dutch lanc
peper (Dutch lange peper), Middle Low German lanc pēper, lancpēper, Old High
German langpfeffar (Middle High German langer pheffer, German langer Pfeffer), Old
Swedish langa pipar (Swedish långpeppar) < Latin piper longus ‘long pepper’ [pepper-
long]a
a. OUP (n.d., long pepper)

In English, long pepper is a calque after the model of the Latin piper longus, and it first appeared
in the early Old English Medicinal text known as Bald’s Leechbook.123 The plant’s binomial name was also
derived from this term, using the neuter form Piper longum. The OED points out that it was supposed to
refer to flowers or unripe fruits of the (black) pepper plant in earlier times. This notion must arise from
the fact that the long pepper fruits do somewhat resemble the unripe black pepper clusters that look
like catkins, and some Romans must have assumed that long pepper is just the unripe version of small
black pepper clumps. Nevertheless, I am certain that the Romans did not see young unripe black peppers
still on the vine very often, so we can forgive them this time. The gloss of long pepper from Latin is not
unique to English, as many European languages went down the same route.149

149 Compare Anglo-Norman poivre lonc (13th cent.; Middle French, French poivre long), Middle Dutch lanc peper (Dutch lange
peper), Middle Low German lanc pēper, lancpēper, Old High German langpfeffar (Middle High German langer pheffer,

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In the East, however, where there was no Latin available to distinguish between black (nigrum)
and long (longum), simply the Sanskrit name pippali was borrowed by the languages whose speakers got
familiar with long pepper and its sisters directly from speakers of Indic languages; compare Malayalam
tippali, Telugu pippali, or Tibetan pi pi ling. Modern Hindi pippali is most probably a tatsama150 word, a
learned loan from Sanskrit. The name of the sacred fig (Ficus religiosa)—otherwise known as the bodhi
tree, under which the Buddha gained enlightenment (the name is rendered as peepul in English from
Hindustani pīpal)—has Sanskrit pippala ‘berry, especially the fruit of the sacred fig’ as an etymon. The
sacred fig was a kind of “spiritual import,” as we know from two instances in which the Indian king
presented as a gift bodhi trees to the Chinese emperor, in 641 and 647 from Magadha, the homeland of
these trees (Schafer, 1985, p. 122).

Table 4.20 Various names for long pepper in English

Species Name Source

Piper longum Indian long pepper van Wyk (2014)
Piperlongum long pepper vanWyk (2014)
Piper longum pippali van Wyk (2014)
Piper longum thippali
Piper retrofactum Balinese long pepper van Wyk (2014)
Piper retrofactum Javanese long pepper van Wyk (2014)

German langer Pfeffer), Old Swedish langa pipar (Swedish långpeppar), according to the OED; as well as Italian pepe lungo,
Spanish pimienta larga, Portuguese pimenta-longa, Finnish pitkäpippuri, Polish pieprz długi, etc.

150 Tatsama refers to a group of vocabulary terms consisting of learned loanwords from Sanskrit taken into modern languages
of India, including both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages. It is comparable to the usage of Greek and Latin words in
modern European languages, as they belong to a higher register, e.g.: the choice to use curriculum over courses. It is
accompanied with tadbhava, which is the class of words that evolved.

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Arabic
Etymology 23. Arabic ‫ فلفل‬filfil, fulful ‘pepper’ < Persian ‫ پلپل‬pilpil ‘id.’; cf. cognates
Old Armenian płpeł, Old Georgian პილპილი ṗilṗili <? Middle Indo-Aryan ?
‘long pepper’ < Sanskrit pippali ‘long pepper Piper longum (plant and berry); a
berry’a
a. Lane (1863, p. 2434); Sultan Qaboos University (1985)

Arabic fulful151 comes via Persian from essentially the same Indic etymon as English pepper: Sanskrit
pippali. The word is first attested as an Arabic spice term in this set (AD sixth century). Similarly to
almost all other languages, the word can be appended by the adjectives for black and white. And, as
fulful is a “collective” term, we can refer to a singular peppercorn by adding the singular feminine
marker -a (tā marbūta) suffix.

Table 4.21 Various names for pepper in Arabic

Species Name Tr. Gloss Source

Pipernigrum ‫ فلفل‬fulful Wehr (1976)

Piper nigrum ‫ فلفلأبيض‬fulful abyaḍ white pepper Baalbaki (1995)

Piper nigrum ‫ فلفل أسود‬fulful aswad black pepper Baalbaki (1995)

Piper nigrum ‫ فلفلة‬fulfula Wehr (1976)

Etymology 24. Arabic ‫ دارفلفل‬dārfilfil ‘long pepper,’ compound of two Persian words
< Persian ‫ دار پلپل‬dār pilpil ‘long pepper,’ formed within Persian from dār ‘wood’ +
pilpil ‘pepper’ (both words are Sanskrit loanwords) < ultimately from Sanskrit dāru +
pippali ‘long pepper’a
a. Lane (1863, p. 2435)

151 “Also pronounced filfil but the vulgar pronounce it [thus] with kesr—name of the /i/—and the pronouncing it with kesr
is said to be not allowable [...],” as reported by Lane (1863, p. 2434).

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Table 4.22 Various names for long pepper in Arabic.

Species Name Tr. Gloss Source

Piper chaba; et al. ‫دارفلفل‬ dārfilfil Wehr (1976)

Chinese
Etymology 25. Mandarin Chinese 胡椒 hú jiāo ‘black pepper’ [barbarian-pepper],
from 胡 hú ‘Western barbarians, steppe nomads’ + 椒 jiāo ‘pepper, spice’ (jiāo was the
prototype spice in China, originally referring to the local “Sichuan pepper” which is
now called 花椒 huājiāo [flowerpepper]), [Northern and Southern] 420–445a
a. Schuessler (2007)

There is no surprise in the anatomy of pepper terms in Chinese either, except that there we have an
extra layer of modifiers, namely hu ‘Western barbarians, steppe nomads.’ This indicates two things: one,
black pepper must have arrived China from the west, transmitted by the nomadic peoples of the steppe
outside of Chinese territories. Two, jiao, the term now denoting all kinds of ‘peppers,’ existed before
Piper nigrum was known, and it refers to the prototype spice item for Chinese speakers. With some
background knowledge, we know that this prototype spice in China was the fruit of the Zanthoxylum
species, otherwise known as Sichuan pepper. Hujiao ‘black pepper’ first appeared in the Hou Hanshu ca.
AD 450.

Table 4.23 Various names for pepper in Chinese

Species Name Tr. Gloss Source

Piper nigrum 白胡椒 báihújiāo white-barbarian-pepper MDBG (n.d.)

Pipernigrum 胡椒 hújiāo barbarian-pepper S.-Y. Hu (2005)

Piper nigrum 黑胡椒 hēihújiāo black-barbarian-pepper MDBG (n.d.)

Piper nigrum 綠胡椒 lǜhújiāo green-barbarian-pepper Regency Spices (2022)

Piper nigrum 青胡椒 qīnghújiāo green-barbarian-pepper Regency Spices (2022)

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Etymology 26. Mandarin Chinese 蓽拔 bìbá MC /piɪt ̚ buɑt/̚ ‘long pepper,’ a phonetic
loan < Sanskrit pippali ‘long pepper Piper longum (plant and berry); a berry’a
a. Monier-Williams (1899, p. 626)

Long pepper in Chinese is 蓽茇 bìbō, as it appears on TCM databases152, or 蓽拔 bìbá, with

some other historical character variations. A local Hong Kong spice vendor is marketing it as 長胡椒/
蓽撥 zhǎng hújiāo/bìbō, the first of which is an obvious rendering of the English long [black] pepper,
while the second uses the second character 撥 bō, the same one used when first recorded in historical
documents. The first mention is in 通典 Tongdian153 “Comprehensive statutes,” written by Du You, a late
eighth-century encyclopedia and administrative history covering ancient times up to 756, including the
Battle of Talas and other important events in Tang history. Long pepper appears in the last part of the
book, which concerns “Frontier defense,” under the section 波斯 Bosi [Persia], in a listing of all the
products that are supposed to be found there.154 Long pepper also appears in the 酉陽雜俎 Youyang
Zazu 155 “Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang,” a ninth-century Tang miscellany on various topics by
Duan Chengsi. It contains fantastic stories from ghosts to strange animals, “legends and hearsay, reports
on natural phenomena, short anecdotes, and tales of the wondrous and mundane, as well as notes on
such topics as medicinal herbs, perfume, tattoo and language” – to quote Reed (1995, p. 1). Book 156
eighteen contains twenty-four entries on exotic plants that have been imported into China or brought
as tribute from places such as Syria, Persia, Malaysia, and Silla [Korea]. The author usually gives the
foreign names of these products and tries to compare them to a plant more familiar to the Chinese
readership. The plants featured here include cardamom, galbanum, acacia, jackfruit, Balm of Gilead,
Narcissus, and jasmine (Reed, 1995, p. 68). Entry 56 is on long pepper (蓽撥 bìbō), where Duan tells us

152. E.g., in the Chinese Herbal Medicine Database of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University:
https://herbaltcm.sn.polyu.edu.hk/herbal/long-pepper

153 http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Science/tongdian.html

154 https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&id=565096

155 http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Novels/youyangzazu.html

156 The original term is 卷 juan, menaing ‘scroll, book,’ or ‘volume, chapter.’

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that it comes from Magadha and is pronounced as 蓽撥梨 *bit-bat-li.157 Magadha refers to a culturally
important historic region of India roughly on the eastern Ganges plane. He also tells us the purported
Fulin [Roman] name for it, and then proceeds to describe the appearance of the plant, likening the fruit
to mulberries, which bear a close enough similarity to long pepper fruits. This is clear evidence that the
Chinese used the Sanskrit word referring to long pepper, and Schafer (1985, p. 151) mentions that it was
commonly shortened to pippal and mispronounced as pitpat or pippat.

蓽撥，出摩伽陀國，呼為蓽撥梨，拂林國呼為阿梨訶他。苗長三四尺，莖細
如箸。葉似戢葉。子似桑椹，八月採。 (YYZZ 18:56)158

This is a good time to remind the reader that it is the long pepper that gave us the word pepper in English
and many other languages around the world, as it was shown in etymology 21.
I mentioned its “sisters” earlier, because long pepper is not alone here, as there are other species,
such as Piper retrofractum, also known as Javanese long pepper or sometimes as Balinese long pepper. At
this point it will make sense to use the name Indian long pepper when referring to Piper longum to avoid
confusion. These two plants and their fruits are very similar, and they are often lumped together in
discussions. It is enough to remember that the Indian long pepper is important in India and mainland
Southeast Asia, while the Javanese long pepper is more relevant to insular Southeast Asia, but both were
exported to medieval China and most likely there was no distinction made between the two. Javanese
long pepper is more pungent than both black and long pepper and is used in medicine, pickling, and
curries, while much of it is exported to China—wrote Burkill (1935). Long pepper also spread through
southern Asia before black pepper (Burkill, 1935, pp. 1746–1751).
We know that long pepper was popular in Rome during Pliny’s time, and that it was more
expensive than black pepper. And if we look at the fact that the name borrowed into Greek from Sanskrit
was pippali and not marica, we can readily assume that it was introduced to Europe before black pepper.
These plants hold the key to one of the questions I asked at the beginning of this project, that is:

157 Reconstructed Tang pronunciation.

158 The same page also has an entry on black pepper. https://ctext.org/library.pl?if=en&file=85088&page=282

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Why was the Indonesian word cabai so resistant to change, and why did Indonesian not loan the words
for ’pepper’ or ’chili’? They bear very similar fruits, turning bright red when ripe and growing as though
reaching upward.

Table 4.24 Various names for long pepper in Chinese

Species Name Tr. Gloss Source

Piper longum 蓽茇 bìbá DeFrancis (2003)

Piper longum 畢勃 bìbó

Piper longum 蓽撥 bìbō S.-Y. Hu (2005)

Table 4.25 Conventionalized names for pepper in English, Arabic, and Chinese, found in dictionaries

Language Term Gloss Loan Source

English black pepper maybe OUP (n.d.)

English pepper yes OUP (n.d.)

English white pepper maybe OUP (n.d.)

Arabic fulful yes Wehr (1976)

Arabic fulful abyaḍ white pepper no Baalbaki (1995)

Arabic fulful aswad black pepper no Baalbaki (1995)

Arabic fulfula no Wehr (1976)

Chinese báihújiāo white-barbarian-pepper no MDBG (n.d.)

Chinese hújiāo barbarian-pepper no DeFrancis (2003)

Chinese hēihújiāo black-barbarian-pepper no MDBG (n.d.)

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Table 4.26 Conventionalized names for long pepper in English, Arabic, and Chinese, found in
dictionaries

Language Term Gloss Loan Source

English long pepper yes OUP (n.d.)
Arabic dārfilfil yes Wehr (1976)
Chinese bìbá yes DeFrancis (2003)
Chinese bìbō yes S.-Y. Hu (2005)

Summary

4.5.5 The Diffusion of Pepper

The names of pepper on the map in figure 4.16 demonstrate indirect evidence for the trails the materials
have left and show the extent of trade networks at certain times. They reveal the cultures and
civilizations located at the heartland of the product and the crossroads of its exchange. The distribution
of clusters of words belonging to the same categories in this plotting also indicate the possible ways of
diffusion. This can then be studied from a historical linguistic point of view through investigating
language contact and loanwords, reinforced with historical awareness, and supported by botanical
information. Domain knowledge of spices is also crucial, if we want to answer specific questions about
the spread of spices and spice terminology. For example, one of the reasons pepper (and its name) was
so successful at reaching faraway places so early on is the fact that pepper does not spoil. Or at least, not
it does not spoil fast as compared to other agricultural products; it keeps its aroma and pungency longer
that many other spices. Krondl (2007, p. 59) writes that “pepper, in particular, is remarkably stable and
can be stored up to a decade as long as it’s kept reasonably dry.” This is one of the key features of spices,
which allowed them to be shipped and carried thousands of miles away, during the course of several
months if not years. Moreover, as dried plant matter, spices are also light, resulting in an extremely high
price-to-weight ratio compared to, say, wheat. This is what made trading in pepper so lucrative in the
past, and that defined the fate (and face) of cities, such as Venice.
Turning our attention back to vocabulary, the most fascinating part of this phenomenon is that

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the word pepper originates at so great a distance from English—both in time and space. Thanks to the
hard work of historical linguists and philologists, we have a decent reconstruction of pepper’s journey,
and we know that Germanic tribes must have loaned the term on mainland Europe, some time before
their migration to England around the fifth century. Early Old English pipor comes from Latin, which
originates in the Sanskrit word pippali by way of an Indo-Aryan transmission (see etymology 21). The
spatial and temporal trajectories of this word are remarkable, and they follow the path of the material.
Indian pepper (black and long) was known and coveted in Arabia and Rome long before the Anglo-
Saxons got to taste it. Still, much of the story of pepper and its worldwide diffusion goes back to
prehistoric times. Tracing its itinerary on Eurasian pathways is difficult at this time depth, but we have
breadcrumbs: its names. Pippali and its derivatives mark the way the spice spread, even where written
documentation and archaeological finds are missing.
Now, homing in on our focus of English, Arabic, and Chinese, we will look at the etymological
stages of the words for pepper in these languages. In Figure 4.16, I tried to illustrate the origins of the
words for pepper in the languages under inspection. We see that the branch that leads to English is on
the same trajectory as Arabic, both going back to the Sanskrit etymon. They also formed their words for
long pepper with the prototype words pepper and filfil: English modeled it after Latin, while Arabic used
a Persian term that compounded ‘wood’ and ‘pepper’ (dar pilpil), on the reasons behind which we can
only speculate. Either it reminded the Persians of a piece of stick, or there was maybe some type of
analogy with the name of cinnamon: dar chini. Unmistakably, the Chinese did not use a loan word for
black pepper. They formed their own name by compounding their prototype word, jiao, appending it
with hu, referring to foreigners, i.e., Western barbarians. Notwithstanding, Sanskrit pippali also survives
in Chinese, in the form of biba, strictly referring to long pepper, known probably before Tang times
(attested in the Tongdian) and still used in TCM. The question begs to be asked: Why was one pepper
adopted with a native word and designation, and the other named with a loan word? Two facts are
relevant: first, black peppercorns are very similar to the indigenous Sichuan peppers—in their shape,
size, taste, and function—and therefore it was an obvious option to apply the term that already existed
to the new material. By way of their similarity, a metaphoric way of expression extended the set of
referents for this word, jiao. But long pepper was a new item not notably similar to already existing
Chinese products, so it placed itself further away from Sichuan pepper in the semantic space. The two

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do not match in color, shape, size, and even in its use long pepper was (and still is) rather a medicine
than a culinary spice. It was alien enough to be adorned with a loanword.

Figure 4.16 Diffusion of names for black pepper and long pepper, and their
etymological stages in English, Arabic, and Chinese

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4.6 TURMERIC

⸙ 8. Turmeric

English: turmeric. Arabic: ‫ كركم‬kurkum. Chinese: 薑黃 jiānghuáng [ginger-yellow]; 黃薑 huángjiāng [yellow-

ginger]. Hungarian: kurkuma.

Plant species: Curcuma longa L. (syn. Curcuma domestica Valeton)

Family: Zingiberaceae
Part used: rhizome
Region of origin: India
Cultivated in: China; Honduras; India; Indonesia; Jamaica
Color: orange-yellow

Figure 4.17 Turmeric rhizome, slices, and powder Curcuma longa. Credit:
Aromatiques

Turmeric is a spice obtained from the dried rhizomes of Curcuma longa, an aromatic plant closely related
and very similar to ginger. Commercial turmeric can be found in the shape of finger-like knobs, slices,
and, most commonly, powder. It can be seen in Figure 4.17. Turmeric is an important ancient spice,
medicine, dye, and social and ritual substance, and it turns everything it touches yellow. It has a distinct
smell and taste—it is slightly bitter and somewhat pungent—and it is used to color food, textiles, and

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even as a protection from evil spirits.159 Turmeric, “the golden spice,” is well known for its importance in
South and Southeast Asian culinary traditions (curries), traditional and modern medicine (Ayurveda,
see Prasad and Aggarwal [2011]), and religious traditions (e.g., the haldi ceremony before Hindu
weddings; as blessing or prasad ‘a benedictory material,’ see Nair [2019]). Turmeric’s color comes from
curcumin, which is a coloring agent and a common and approved food additive marked by the code E100
on regulated food products.

4.6.1 The Botany, Origins, and Cultivation of Turmeric

Curcuma longa is a perennial herbaceous plant with large oblong leaves, short stem, and attractive white
and yellow flowers that grow in clusters, from the ginger family Zingiberaceae (van Wyk, 2014, p. 128).
The plant is rhizomatous, meaning that the stems are subterranean, sending roots downward and shoots
upward. It is this rhizome that makes turmeric valuable as a spice, and it turns deeper and richer in color
when dried.
Similarly to ginger, turmeric is an ancient sterile cultigen, not found in the wild (van Wyk, 2014,
p. 128). It does not produce seeds; it is propagated by splitting the rhizome. Therefore, as Kikusawa and
Reid (2007) point out, “its distribution in the Pacific area is considered to obviously be the result of
human introduction [...]” Again, the origins of turmeric are not certain (and are disputed), but it is
believed to have been domesticated either in India (Nair, 2019; POWO, 2022b; van Wyk, 2014), or
Southeast Asia (Kikusawa & Reid, 2007; Mabberley, 2017). Turmeric needs a tropical climate to grow, as
it requires high temperatures and rainfall. Harvesting means digging up the mature rhizomes, which are
then dried, sliced, and powdered (van Wyk, 2014, p. 128). The top producer of turmeric is India, but
neighboring and Southeast Asian countries also cultivate and market turmeric as well.
Similarly used and botanically close plants include the paler yellow mango ginger (C. amada),
the Indonesian mango ginger (C. mangga), wild turmeric (C. aromatica, also a dye), and zedoary (C.
zedoaria), an alternative source for turmeric, especially in China (van Wyk, 2014, p. 128).

159 I have personally witnessed the practice of sprinkling turmeric on the doorstep of houses of the Indian community in
Penang, Malaysia.

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4.6.2 The History of Turmeric

Turmeric is widely used in South and Southeast Asia as a spice, medicine, cosmetic, and in rituals. In
India, the use of turmeric dates back to Vedic period (ca. 1500–ca. 500 BC ). It is featured in the
Suśrutasaṃhitā, the foundational text of traditional Indian medicine, as an ingredient in an ointment to
alleviate the effects of poisoned food (Prasad & Aggarwal, 2011). The use of turmeric is most salient in
the various island cultures of the Pacific, where it spread with the Austronesian expansion there starting
around 5000 BP, reaching as far as Polynesia and Fiji, and was used as a dye and ceremonial substance
(McClatchey, 1993; Prance & Nesbitt, 2005; Sopher, 1964). For the early history of turmeric, I recommend
the book chapter titled “Proto Who Utilized Turmeric, and How?” by Kikusawa and Reid (2007), which
deals with the spread and uses of turmeric pre-European contact. It reached Tahiti, Hawaii, and the
Easter Islands before the Europeans. Because of its role in Hindu rites, turmeric probably also spread to
Southeast Asia at later stages as well, with the expansion of Hindu kingdoms in the region (Prance &
Nesbitt, 2005, p. 170).
Turmeric, similarly to ginger, seems to have been known in Europe at early dates, but even if the
modern identifications are correct, it was not a widespread substance before the seventh century. “There
is no evidence of its use in the Levant and the Mediterranean Basin before the Islamic conquests,” write
Amar and Lev (2017, p. 108). In the first century, Dioscorides noted in the De Materia Medica: “It is
reported that there is also another kind of galingale that grows in India. It resembles ginger, it is saffron
colored and bitter when chewed, and it is a fast-acting depilatory when smeared on.” (Dioscorides, ca.
50–70/2005). Despite the fact that both Dioscorides and Pliny mention it, medieval Arabic authors
considered it a novel spice not identified by the classic Greek authors (Amar & Lev, 2017, p. 108).
According to Nair (2019, p. 2), its maritime dispersion from India intensified in the Middle Ages,
reaching the coast of China in the seventh century AD , East Africa a century later, West Africa by 1200,
and Jamaica in the eighteenth century. In Chinese medicinal literature turmeric first appears in the
Xinxiu Bencao, and the Bencao Gangmu treats it as well (Feng et al., 2011).
From its initial diffusion up to Vasco da Gama’s journey and landing in Kozhikode, it was Arab
traders who were instrumental in the westward spread of turmeric, similarly to pepper and other spices
of the time. It is said that, in 1280, Marco Polo described turmeric in the China leg of his travels, but his

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vague description might agree with bastard saffron (safflower, Carthamus tinctorius)160, or a species of
Gardenia that was used as yellow dye in East Asia at the time (Polo & Rusticiano, 1903/2004, p. 226).

There is also a vegetable which has all the properties of the true saffron, as well the smell
as the colour, and yet it is not reall saffron. It is held in great estimation, and being an
ingredient in all their dishes, it bears, on that account, a high price. (Polo, 1926, pp. 251–
252)

4.6.3 The Names of Turmeric

English
Etymology 27. English turmeric ‘turmeric,, obscure origin (by alteration of earlier
forms), 1545 <? akin to French terre mérite ‘saffron’ [worthy earth] <? and Medieval
Latin terra merita ‘turmeric’ [deserved earth] <? Arabic kurkum ‘turmeric; saffron’,
maybe a folk-etymological corruptiona
a. OUP (n.d., s.v. turmeric); Harper (n.d., s.v. turmeric); Guthrie (2009); Klein (1971, p.
789)

According to most etymological dictionaries, the origins of turmeric are obscure and uncertain.136
However, they compare Medieval Latin terra merita, and French terre mérite meaning meritorious earth,
which according to Nair (2019, p. 2) are the source, and refers to “the color of ground turmeric, resembling
a mineral pigment”—I consider this pure speculation.
Truthfully, the English name of turmeric is probably the most obscure out of all English spice
names. Dictionaries or authorities are only guessing, and even the immediate French and Latin etymons
(terre mérite; terra merita) are speculative in terms of directionality. According to my readings, the latest
attempt to explain the origins of the word turmeric was published in an article by Guthrie (2009), who
tried to tie the European word form to the trade languages of Northern India, for example, Pashto tzer

160 A plant introduced to China in the second century bc from Western Asia (Polo & Rusticiano, 1903/2004, p. 226). 136. OUP,
n.d., turmeric; Harper, n.d., turmeric; AHD, 2022, turmeric.

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merich [yellow pepper] (cf. Persian zard ‘yellow,’ and Sanskrit marica ‘[black] pepper’), but because of
the lack of attestation in other languages or a continuous trail of linguistic evidence, I do not find this
explanation convincing. Nevertheless, the author does a good job circumscribing the problematics of
turmeric and the previous attempts to solve it.
The term Indian saffron tells us that Europeans who first came into contact with turmeric (most
likely in Asia, as Nair (2019) proposes, mentioning Marco Polo) were reminded of saffron due to its
similar use and coloring properties, and so this name was devised by compounding the geographic origin
of the novel item with a prototype spice name based on their similarity in function. Arabic also uses a
similar term as we will shortly see.
It is worth pointing out that outside the United Kingdom, the whole of continental Europe uses
derivations of the (scientific) Latin curcuma, or some other name not reminiscent of turmeric. Curcuma,
besides being a botanical name for the genus, is not used for turmeric in English, but it is connected to
the Latin name of saffron, crocus, which shows that the early confusion of the two names survives to this
day in their binomial names. Both words go back to the Arabic etymon of kurkum, which originally
meant ‘saffron.’

Table 4.27 Various names for turmeric in English

Species Name Source

Curcuma longa curcuma OUP (n.d.)
Curcuma longa Indian saffron Nair (2019)
Curcumalonga turmeric vanWyk (2014)

Arabic
Etymology 28. Arabic ‫ كركم‬kurkum ‘turmeric; saffron’; cf. cognates Hebrew
karkom; Aramaic ܳ
/ ‫ܘܪܟܡܐ‬ ܽ
‫ܟ‬,Akkadian kurkanū <? Sanskrit
kuṅkuma ‘saffron’a
a. Kaufman et al. (1987, s.v. kwrkm); Guthrie (2009)

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The Arabic word for turmeric is kurkum, which originally meant ‘saffron.’ The word kurkum has
a Hebrew cognate karkom, and it appears in the Bible once,161 together with other perfumes of ancient
times, where it was identified as saffron. It is also generally accepted that this Semitic words is the
etymon in the name of the saffron crocus, via the Greek word κρόκος krókos, found now in the Latin
binomial name of saffron (Crocus sativus).
Arabic kurkum has other Semitic (Aramaic, Akkadian), and regional cognates of Southwest Asia,
such as Armenian kʿrkʿum (a loan from Syriac), Middle Perisan kwlkwm, and it was suggested
that this word originates in Sankrit, with an etymon of kuṅkuma ‘saffron; saffron powder used as tilak, a
bright red dye used for marking forehead.’ 162 . However, it might be the case that since these words
originally mark saffron, native of the Eastern Mediterranean, it is actually the Sanskrit term that is
ultimately derived from the Semitic, as claimed by Greppin (1987). According to Amar and Lev (2017, p.
108), turmeric received the Semitic name (kurkum/karkom) from saffron due to the close similarities of
their main role: a yellow dye. They also say that this must have happened after the Islamic conquest of
Arabia, which faciitated the introduction and diffusion of turmeric into the region.
Just as in English, medieval Arabic literature called turmeric zaʿfarān hindī ‘Indian saffron’, and
just as in Europe, turmeric in Arabia served as a cheap substitute for the extremely expensive saffron
(Amar & Lev, 2017).
Further Arabic names include hurd (in and around the Gulf, e.g., Yemen), via Persian hard, most
probably derived from the Sanskrit name of turmeric: haridrā (cf. Hindi haldī) (Laufer, 1919).

161 Song of Songs 4:14

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Song%20of%20Songs%204%3A14&version=NRSVUE

162 R. L. Turner, 1962–1966, 164.

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Table 4.28 Various names for turmeric in Arabic

Species Name Tr. Gloss Source

Curcuma longa ‫ أصابع صفر‬aṣābiʿ ṣufr yellow fingers Wikipedia (n.d.)
Curcuma longa ‫ هرد‬hurd Amar and Lev (2017)
Curcuma longa ‫ كركم‬kurkum Amar and Lev (2017)
Curcuma longa ‫ شجرة الخطاطيف‬shajarat al-khaṭāṭīf tree of hooks Amar and Lev (2017)
Curcuma longa ‫ زعفران هندي‬zaʿfarān hindī Indian saffron Amar and Lev (2017)
Curcuma longa ‫ عقدة صفراء‬ʿuqda ṣafrā’ yellow knob Baalbaki (1995)
Curcuma longa ‫ عروق صفر‬ʿurūq ṣufr yellow roots Amar and Lev (2017)

Chinese
Etymology 29. Mandarin Chinese 薑黃 jiānghuáng ‘turmeric’, jiang ‘ginger’ + huang
‘yellow’a
a. Kleeman and Yu (2010, p. 856)

In Chinese, turmeric today is known as jianghuang [ginger-yellow], or less frequently as huangjiang

[yellow-ginger]. A historic name appearing in the Bencao Gangmu and reported by Laufer (1919, pp. 312–
313) is used for both saffron and turmeric. More precisely, the yujin [yü-gold] aromatic (香 xiang) where
the flowers are used (saffron), and the yujin of the roots (turmeric, or some other Curcuma species used
similarly).

Table 4.29 Various names for turmeric in Chinese.

Species Name Tr. Gloss Source

Curcuma longa 黃薑 huángjiāng yellow-ginger DeFrancis (2003)

Curcumalonga 薑黃 jiānghuáng ginger-yellow Kleeman andYu (2010)

Curcuma longa 鬱金 yùjīn yü-gold Schafer (1985)

Summary
Table 4.30 shows the names of turmeric that occur in modern dictionaries.

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Table 4.30 Conventionalized names for turmeric in English, Arabic, and Chinese, found in dictionaries

Language Term Gloss Loan Source

English curcuma yes OUP (n.d.)
English Indian saffron no OUP (n.d.)
English turmeric yes OUP (n.d.)
Arabic hurd yes Lane (1863)
Arabic kurkum yes Wehr (1976)
Arabic ʿuqda ṣafrā’ yellow knob no Baalbaki (1995)
Chinese huángjiāng yellow-ginger no DeFrancis (2003)
Chinese jiānghuáng ginger-yellow no Kleeman and Yu (2010)

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5. THE DIFFUSION OF SPICES

In this chapter, I will present the findings on the diffusion of spices, by looking at the distribution of
spice plants and their primary names. First, an overview of the spices’ geographical distribution will be
presented. Then, a discussion on their spread and spreadability will ensue, and lastly, I will present my
findings on the diffusion of wandering spice names along spatial and temporal trajectories, and how
they relate to the botanical reality. The aim of this chapter is to present an understanding of how spices
spread around the globe as informed by their names and etymologies, but one at the same time
supported by other evidence and the current state of their physical diffusion.

5.1 THE GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF SPICES

In general, it is true that spices come from the hot and humid tropical regions, especially Asia. However,
there are a number of aromatic plants that originate from more temperate regions, and here we should
think about the umbelliferous plants of West and Central Asia: asafoetida, fennel, cumin, caraway, and
others, and we must not forget the three American spices: chile, vanilla, and allspice. Figure 5.1 shows
the macroareas where the 24 spices originate.

Figure 5.1 Distribution of spice plants by the macroarea of their native habitat

Botanical databases, such as POWO, often show distribution and give us the regions where a plant is
native to, and where it has been introduced. “Introduced” means that the plant is not native in the area,
but now grows wild due to human intervention—whether the plant escaped cultivation, or became
naturalized after accidental introduction—or due to natural spreading. Looking at this information
reflects on the plants’ ability to adapt and grow in new places, but also hints at how human usage and

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transmission affected and created habitats. I have collected this information and used it to compare the
spices in question, simply counting the native and introduced regions, and adding them up. In Figure
5.2, you can see the spices ranked by the total number of the regions they grow in, including both native
plants and places where the plants were consequently introduced. I would like to highlight the fact that
the highest ranks are occupied by aromatic plants that are also herbs, both in the botanical and in the
culinary definition. This makes sense, since these plants—e.g., fennel, coriander, dill, fenugreek, etc.—
are not only cultivated for their seeds, but also for the fresh leafy green parts that are made use of as well,
so it is without question that the whole plant “travels” to new places, not only its dried product. Chili
peppers are also available fresh in many places today. People transplant their ingredients whenever they
can, unless the primary goal of cultivation is purely profit.163
The far side of the rankings shows the spices that do not grow extensively across many regions,
regardless of how valuable or popular they are: star anise, asafoetida, saffron, cardamom, cloves. Of
course, behind this are the complex issues of plant biology, ecology, and the many factors that decide a
plant’s resistance to transplantation and whether it can grow in new, alien environments. However, there
is another point to notice here: labor. The lower rankings feature spices that are highly labor-intensive
to cultivate and harvest, including star anise, cardamom, and saffron, but the collection of asafoetida is
cumbersome as well, and this also affects prices. This seems to indicate that the harder it is to cultivate
a spice plant, the less likely it is that it will spread to new places. Interestingly—and of course, closely
related to what was just said—all of these are products that are very specific plant parts, the pericarps
(star anise, Sichuan pepper), dried oleo-gum-resin (asafoetida), stigmas (saffron), and dried flower buds
(cloves). Figure 5.2 shows a grouping by macroarea and by plant family as well.

5.1.1 The Spreadability of Spices

When it comes to spices of commerce, there is a factor that greatly weighs in on their diffusion: their
ability to spread. I have noticed that while some spices were very expensive at some point in time (or
still are), others, with the same levels of demand, were never particularly costly. Related to the ideas of
supply and demand, the answer to this question was scarcity; or in this case, the lack thereof. To put it

163 The Dutch for example actively destroyed plant habitats, and wiped out whole islands—including the population—in
the Spice Islands of Indonesia to generate scarcity and ramp up value during their monopol rule in the seventeenth century.

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simply, a spice was expensive if it was rare or its supply was tightly controlled, not unlike diamonds today.
Spices that could be easily grown anywhere were transplanted early on and were therefore not
considered for their lavish returns, however venerated and influential they were. The two best examples
for this are ginger and chili.
If you have ever left a knob of fresh ginger on your kitchen counter for weeks or even months,
you might have noticed that it does not rot: in fact, it will eventually sprout and start growing a plant
(similarly to an onion or a potato). And if you want more ginger root later, you should put it into a pot of
soil. This was the secret of ginger’s prehistoric success, best known in connection with the Austronesian
expansion that began around 5000 years ago and populated the Pacific lands; it is generally believed to
have unfurled out of Taiwan (Mirabal et al., 2013). The early Austronesians carried ginger everywhere on
their migrations into Maritime Southeast Asia and the Pacific on their outrigger boats (a native
Austronesian invention that enabled people to reach as far as Hawaii and Madagascar), as it was a
valuable source of nutrition with added medicinal value (see Dalby, 2000, pp. 21–25). Ginger, among its
numerous health benefits, strengthens the immune system, and it was therefore an invaluable crop to
carry on long ocean voyages and therefore a constant feature on board ships of maritime Asia (compare
the “discovery” of lemon’s effectiveness against scurvy by British naval doctor James Lind in 1747 [Allan,
2021]). Accordingly, there is a reconstructed Proto-Oceanic term for ginger, *laqia (Bellwood et al., 2006,
p. 52), and a Malagasy term for ginger seems to correspond to a Sanskrit etymon: sakarivo < śṛṅgavera
(Adelaar, 1994, p. 41). More recent genetic and archaeobotanical studies support the Austronesian
expansion theory, which in the past two centuries stood solely on linguistic grounds. The names of ginger
are among the linguistic clues that helped anthropologists, ethnographers, and linguists to reconstruct
and establish a chronology. But there is a botanical clue as well that this is a very ancient spice and a
long-term product of trade: it is not found in the wild anymore (Ravindran & Nirmal Babu, 2005).
Although it is naturalized in India, it is believed to originate in Southeast Asia (Ravindran & Nirmal Babu,
2005). The ease of ginger rhizomes’ transportation over long distances means that it had spread to other
tropical and subtropical regions at a very early time, making the primary center of domestication hard
to locate. It was hence called the most widely cultivated spice (Lawrence, 1984), though I am almost
certain today it would be the chili pepper. Dalby (2000) also points out that, because humans propagated
ginger for millennia by splitting the rhizome, it has lost its ability to be grown from seeds.

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150
100
50

(a) Total number of growing regions

150
100
50

Med.; W. Asia Asia Americas Eurasia Mediterranean

macroarea
(b) Spices by total number of growing regions, grouped by macroarea

150

100

50

family Apiaceae Solanaceae Fabaceae Zingiberaceae Orchidaceae Piperaceae

Lauraceae Myrtaceae Myristicaceae Rutaceae Iridaceae Schisandraceae
(c) Spices by total number of growing regions, grouped by family

Figure 5.2 Spices ranked according to the total number of regions they grow in, both
native and introduced

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Chili, on the other hand, can reproduce from seeds, and it is easy to grow in temperate areas as
well, so much so that the American spice became an integral part of many European, African, and Asian
cuisines in less then a hundred years since its introduction by the Portuguese, and many forget that it in
fact came from the New World. The red peppers were introduced to Hungary by the Ottomans soon after
their conquest, marked by the Battle of Mohács in 1526, hence the initial name törökbors [Turkish-
pepper (of Piper nigrum)], and Hungarian paprika—referring to the fine red powder made from dried
chilies (attested in 1748, a borrowing from Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian [SCB]) 164 —soon came to be an
integral part of Hungarian cuisine and identity. Chilies soon reached Asia as well; Dott (2020) in his well-
researched book about the cultural history of the chile in China writes that a 1614 Korean encyclopedia
noted “Now it is grown everywhere [in Korea],” which means it had been introduced into Korea before
then. Even in 1621, one Chinese bencao author believed it to come from Sichuan! “It comes from central
Shu [Sichuan]. Now it is found everywhere,” reports the Shiwu Bencao (Dott, 2020, pp. 24, 28).
And so, it is clear that some spices spread more easily than others, affecting trade patterns, prices,
and the diffusion of names. But how to compare these data? How to measure them? To have a basic
understanding of what effect spices’ ease or difficulty in spreading can have on their diffusion, value,
and global popularity, I created a rudimentary metric based on geographical-botanical data from POWO
(POWO, 2022b). I will call this spreadability. I have simply divided the sum of the introduced regions
with the sum of the native regions, to serve as a crude indicator of how well a spice plant has spread.
Intuitively, this index concerns spice plants’ ability and “ecological willingness” to spread to new regions,
whether as a result of human hands (by trade and transplantation) or through nature (self-seeding,
spreading by birds, etc., into neighboring areas).

This metric accounts for the initial difference between whether a spice was minimally distributed (i.e.,
found only in one or two regions), or well distributed, before being introduced into either a few, or many,
new places. Figure 5.3 shows the spices ranked by their spreadability index. The figure shows for example

164 Zaicz, 2006, paprika.

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turmeric, originally from “one region” (India), is now found in 53 other regions, resulting in the highest
score of 53. On the far side of the graph, we find Sichuan pepper, whose main source, Zanthoxylum
bungeanum, is indigenous to ten geographical zones in China, but has been introduced to only one
region (Uzbekistan), earning it the low score of 0.10.
This graph—like any other—greatly depends on the data fed into it, and, like any other
quantitative analysis, it has its limitations. Although the regions in the POWO database are uniform, they
are not clear-cut ecological zones, but rather are based on administrative divisions of countries, and thus
it is not perfect. While some large countries are divided into broad areas that represent different
biodiversity zones, their borders are arbitrary. For example, the United States, Australia, Russia, and
China are divided by states, provinces, or still greater geographical areas (e.g., New South Wales, Central
European Russia, China South-Central). But India is just one unit, which helps explain the very high
score of turmeric.165 Nonetheless, in terms of general usefulness, the index has some merit. If we look at
the distribution map of turmeric,166 we will see that it did indeed spread far and wide, from Southeast
Asia through West Africa to the Caribbean, and, compared with Sichuan pepper167—which is still mostly
limited to China—it is much more popular globally. Figure 5.3 (b) and (c) show the spices ranked by
their spreadability index as well, but broken down by macroarea and plant family. I have included the
plant family groupings because this determination can be very interesting to those with affinity to the
plant sciences, and, truthfully, this particular grouping would be much more exciting if more plants
could be included in these analyses.
Based on my reading and the data from the botanical databases, I have tried to approximate the
geographical origins of each spice discussed inthis paper. Figure 5.4 shows this attempt, plotted onto the
globe. In cases where a spice’s supposed native area includes a large number of expansive regions, I have
opted for a geospatial mid-point as a compromise. Accordingly, you can see caraway placed in the middle
of Eurasia, because I used the coordinates for Eurasia, as it is marked native everywhere in Eurasia in the

165 Another limitation might be the age of this database, as we find zones named Yugoslavia, or Czechoslovakia, but I doubt
the biodiversity changed as much as the political borders.

166 Curcuma longa on POWO: https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/796451-1#distribution-map

167 Zanthoxylum bungeanum on POWO: https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/775625-1/#distribution-map

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database. Most spice plants fortunately do not have such extensive native areas, enabling their origins
to more precisely shown, and in many cases the exact origins can be pinpointed. For example, nutmeg
and cloves are neatly situated on the tiny islands of the Moluccas in present-day Indonesia. The sizes of
the data points correspond to the their spreadability values, and these indicate very clearly that South
Asian spices had a tremendous “success” in terms of global diffusion. This also conforms to historical
facts; during the centuries-old maritime trade between East and West, whose two main end points were
the entrepôts of Arabia and the port cities of South China, India was the halfway point. Because of its
central location on the Maritime Silk Road, it was on the shores of South India that Arabs, Persians,
Southeast Asians, Chinese, and later Europeans exchanged goods with each other, and therefore this
region was a key point in the spread of spices as well.

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(a) Spices ranked by spreadability

(b) Spices ranked by spreadability, grouped by macroarea

(c) Spices ranked by spreadability, grouped by family

Figure 5.3 Spices ranked by their spreadability index, showing which spice plants
spread to a greater number of regions, taking into account the initial state of their
distribution

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Figure 5.4 The approximate geographical origins of the spices in this paper; size
represents their spreadability index. For a full, interactive version, please visit
https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com /partigabor/phd-thesis-
viz/blob/main/spices_map.html

What more we can know about the diffusion of spices beyond the botanical and historical
evidence, is to be found in their names. In most cases, the spice names spread with the materials, and
these have left their traces. Moreover, these linguistic traces—together with the close study of their
respective materials—can help us match or reconstruct the exact routes the materials took, accounting
for communities and cultures that have played important roles in their dissemination. The following
section will focus on this phenomenon.

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5.2 THE LINGUISTIC DIFFUSION OF SPICES

Turning at last to the language element of spice diffusion, I will illustrate linguistic diffusion through
investigating spice terminology and its spread in spatial and temporal dimensions by tracing loanwords
and analyzing attestation timelines. Before introducing the etymological findings, I must touch upon the
terms’ borrowed status, which I have previously introduced briefly in Section 3.2.2. Accordingly, this
chapter focuses on the borrowed elements of spice terminology.

Figure 5.5 Ratio of borrowed terms in the spice nomenclature across the three
languages, based on Table 5.1

5.2.1 Borrowings: Loanwords and Wanderwörter

In order to accurately compare the itineraries of loanwords and Wanderwörter in a trilingual setting, I
had to determine which spice names are in fact borrowed, and which are native derivations/inventions.
In most instances, it is rather obvious if a word is a borrowing or not, while in others, it was not so easy
to determine. For example, I initially assumed that Sichuan pepper (which does not occur in English
dictionaries) is an English construction and therefore not a borrowing, but after trying to find its source,
I learned that it is a calque (loan translation) from Chinese 川椒 chuanjiao [Sichuan pepper],168 devised
in the field of herbal medicine (Hooper, 1929, p. 140). In short, I analyzed the names based on their
borrowed status to find loanwords. The result of this analysis of the default names of the twenty-four
spices can be seen in Table 5.1.

168 Which uses the prototype spice word in Chinese, prefixed with the second character of Sichuan province (originally
meaning ‘river’).

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Table 5.1 Spice nomenclature, showing if the terms are borrowed (+), not borrowed (-), or maybe
borrowed (?)

English Borrowed Arabic Borrowed Chinese Borrowed

allspice - fulful ifranjī - duōxiāngguǒ -
anise + anīsūn + huíqín -
asafoetida + ḥiltīt + āwèi +
caraway + karāwiyā + gělǚzi +
cardamom + hāl + dòukòu ?
cassia + salīkha - ròuguì -
chili + fulful ḥārr - làjiāo -
cinnamon + qirfa - xīlánròuguì -
clove + qaranful + dīngxiāng -
coriander + kuzbara + yánsuī -
cumin + kammūn + zīrán +
dill + shibithth + shíluó +
fennel + shamar + huíxiāng -
fenugreek + ḥulba - húlúbā +
ginger + zanjabīl + jiāng -
long pepper + dārfilfil + bìbō +
mace + basbās + ròudòukòugānpí -
nutmeg + jawz al-ṭīb + ròudòukòu -
pepper + fulful + hújiāo -
saffron + zaʿfarān + fānhónghuā -
Sichuan pepper + fulful sītshuwān - huājiāo -
star anise - yānsūn najmī - bājiǎohuíxiāng -
turmeric + kurkum + jiānghuáng -
vanilla + fānīliyā + xiāngcǎo -

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The most important finding here is that English has by far the most loaned terms in the spice
domain—according to our modest sample of spices—followed by Arabic, and finally Chinese. Out of
the 24 default names, there are 21 borrowings in English, 17 in Arabic, and 8 in Chinese. Figure 5.5 shows
the ratio of borrowings concisely. Of course, this figure seen alone can be misleading, since the difference
in ratio between the languages is not representative only of the spice domain; the English lexicon has a
large number of loanwords in general. Dictionaries especially have a high number of loanwords, but
everyday communication features them greatly as well. For example, out of the top 1000 most frequently
used words in the British National Corpus (BNC), more than half are borrowed (usually from French and
Latin) (Durkin, 2014, p. 38). We should always approach the percentage of loanwords in a language with
caution, and I will not cite numbers, but from my studies I know that the percentage of loanwords in
English is certainly higher than it is in Arabic, and Chinese, which prefer to coin words using native
elements.
Word formation in Arabic most often happens internally by utilizing the possibilities of the
highly productive root system, but it seems that in the spice domain, loanwords entered the Arabic
vocabulary at high rates as well. Thankfully, the semitic root system and the rules of Arabic word patterns
make it easy to spot loanwords. For example, if we take the words zanjabīl ‘ginger,’ zaʿfarān ‘saffron,’ or
qaranful ‘cloves.’ we can be sure that these are loanwords for the following reasons: There are no native
quinqueliteral (five letter/consonant) roots in Arabic, the few existing ones being borrowings.
Furthermore, there are no true “broken plural,” or related verbal forms for these words. Interestingly, a
large number of Persian (and other) loanwords in the domain of plants, fruits, and vegetables have five-
consonant roots, including eggplant, cauliflower, parsley, and oranges.
My knowledge of Chinese word formation is rather limited, but I would like to point out a few
phenomena. First, it is well known that, while Classical Chinese operated with monosyllabic, single-
character words, modern Chinese has a strong tendency to prefer disyllabic words, mainly to
disambiguate homophones. Therefore, only the most ancient spices would have a monosyllabic ancestor,
Sinograms that convey the meaning of the spice on their own (e.g., jiao ‘pepper,’ jiang ‘ginger,’ gui ‘cassia’).
In modern Chinese, ginger is the only one that still can stand alone, where pepper and cassia are always
affixed with modifiers to distinguish them from other items, and to fit the disyllabic trend. Loanwords
will also often conform to this trend and become disyllabic in Chinese when integrated (e.g., awei

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‘asafoetida,’ bibo ‘long pepper,’ ziran ‘cumin’). Tri-syllabic loanwords are often historical in this domain
and not a common feature in day-to-day usage; they are not an integral part of the conventionalized
vocabulary (e.g., zafulan ‘saffron,’ huluba ‘fenugreek,’ geluzi ‘caraway’). Second, I want to highlight the
curiosity of phono-semantic matching. In Chinese, loaned elements are sometimes incorporated by
words that are phonetically similar and semantically related, thus hiding the word’s or morpheme’s
borrowed quality. For example, husui, a name for coriander literally meaning ‘barbarian coriander’ is
supposed to be a phono-semantic matching of an Iranian term (*koswi, *košwi, *gošwi ), according to
Laufer (1919). I will discuss the naming of newly introduced items in more detail in the next chapter.
The fact that English has many loanwords in the spice domain is not surprising if we consider
that all of these aromatic products are exotic, they are not from anywhere near England, or the Saxon
homeland. As for Arabic, we know from the history of the spice trade that virtually all materials from
Asia passed through the Arabian Peninsula, and the names of many spices with origins in West Asia
predate the Arabic expansion of the seventh century and therefore in Arabic, many are loanwords from
other Semitic languages. Loanwords in Chinese in the spice domain are much fewer in number, with
most of the historic words being Silk Road terms, or contemporary creations for those introduced in
modern times.
5.2.2 Spatial Trajectories: Tracing Spice Terms Around the Globe

In order to present the findings in a convenient, reader friendly, and interesting way, I turned to
geospatial mapping. The plots seen in this section are made possible by utilizing the etymological data
on spice terminology, collected and introduced for each spice in chapter 4, and justified in Section 3.2.3.
When creating these visualizations, I have included relevant historic names beyond the 24 default terms
such as amomum, dārṣīnī ‘cinnamon’, or xingqu ‘asafoetida’, and I have also left out terms that are not
borrowings. Therefore, you will not find words on the tables such as allspice, qirfa ‘cinnamon,’ or hujiao
‘black pepper.’

Note 5.2.1. The geospatial plots in this section (fig. 5.6, 5.7, and 5.8) are a static version

of interactive graphs available online via clicking the links given in the captions. I

highly recommend examining these visualizations, as they supply further details on the

words’ histories, and most importantly, the traces can be isolated by double clicking on

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an item in the legend, allowing for a clearer view and comparisons. The color palette in

these plots does not have any significance, the sole purpose of the colors being to

visually separate the traces of the terms.

Spices Flow into Europe: The Case of English

Figure 5.6 shows the diffusion of spice names viewed from the progression of the words’ etymological
stages entering into English. Words that were coined in English (i.e., not loanwords) are not present.
What we see here, is a very clear trend in the dispersion of English spice terminology to have an East-to-
West directionality. Besides the few spices that came from the Americas, all via Spanish (chili, pimento,
vanilla, where chili is represented by the single line crossing the Atlantic Ocean pointing to a Nahuatl
etymon) after the fifteenth century, the majority of spice terms are oriental in origin, and have long
histories reaching into times of antiquity and beyond.
As far as space and distance goes (and probably time as well), the most remote Wanderwort
seems to be ginger, whose source can be traced back to a Dravidian language of South India, but even
that form has been identified as a loanword from an unknown Southeast Asian language169 (cf. Etmology
30). Based on the cognates in surrounding unrelated languages (Khasi, Thai, Old Chinese), we can
assume that ginger is a very early Wanderwort of the region going back to a Proto-Tibeto-Burman
reconstructed form, /*kjaŋ/ (Matisoff, 2003, p. 302). Even more exciting is the fact that, besides English,
the Arabic and Chinese words for ginger originate in the same etymon as well. I recommend using the
link to explore the interactive visualization isolating the trace for ginger, or any other spice, as the point
is much more easily seen when inspecting a single item as opposed to a large group.
Besides the extreme case of ginger, we should take note that words from India (e.g., pepper) have
passed through Persia, Arabia, and Greece, and, in the final stages, almost every loanword arrived via
French and/or Latin. Examining the etyma of English spice terms, it is impossible not to acknowledge
the role of the Arab traders, the Greek city states, and—most crucial for the rest of Europe—the
importance of the Roman Empire.

169 OUP, n.d., ginger.

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Figure 5.6 The diffusion of spice terminology in English, focusing on loanwords and
Wanderwörter. For a full interactive version, please visit
https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/partigabor/phd-the sis-
viz/blob/main/diffusion_en.html

Etymology 30. English ginger, ca. 925 < reinforced by Old French gingivere, gingibre
‘ginger’ < Medieval Latin gingiber ‘ginger’ < Latin zingiber ‘ginger’ < Ancient Greek
ζιγγίβερις ziggiberis ‘ginger’ < Pali siṅgivera ‘ginger’; cf. cognates Sanskrit शृङ् गवेर
śṛṇgavera < Dravidian *cinki-wēr ‘ginger,’ South dravidian nominal compound from the

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etyma of Tamil and Malayalam iñci (both with regular loss of an initial sibilant) + vēr
(Proto-Dravidian wēr); the base of *cinki is a loanword < unknown language ? ‘ginger,’
unidentified Southeast Asian language; cf. cognates Khasi sying /sʔiŋ/, Thai khing,
Vietnamese gừng, Chinese jiāng <? Proto-Sino-Tibetan *kjaŋ ‘ginger’a
a. OUP (n.d.) and Ross (1952); Krishnamurti (2003, p. 5)

Spices Travel through Arabia: The Case of Arabic

Arabic loanwords in the spice domain reflect where the Arab merchants sourced their spices from:
either overland via Persia or by sea from India (e.g., fulful ‘pepper,’ dārṣīnī ‘cinnamon,’ dārfilfil ‘long
pepper,’ etc.). Regional Semitic borrowings are also present, and these include spices that originate
relatively close to Arabia and the peoples of the region who knew and used them; e.g., kammūn, shibitt
‘dill,’ shamar ‘fennel,’ all three traced back to Akkadian. Arabia represents a bridge in the spice trade
between Europe and Asia, connecting the Orient and Occident during the peak of the spice trade
starting from the sixth century. In fact, the rise of Mecca, “the cradle of Islam,” is known to have become
properous due to the trade that led ships to moor around the coast of Arabia, and turned caravans
toward its flourishing trading posts with the ultimate goal of exchanging products for money with the
merchants of the Mediterranean. The Arabs were such skilled traders that soon they managed the
coastal trade in Indian ports as well, these representing the midway point in the Indian Ocean trade
network (Parti, 2017).

Spices in the Middle Kingdom: The Case of Chinese

Loanwords of the spice domain in Chinese mostly testify to the early—indirect—relationships with
India and Central Asia through the Silk Roads and their peoples (see bibo and xingqu from Sanskrit,
and awei, husui, and shiluo via various Iranian languages). Huluba ‘fenugreek’ is unquestionably a
rendering of Arabic hulba, most likely arriving via Persian. More recent borrowings include
duoxianggio ‘allspice,’ a semantic translation of the English term, and geluzi ‘caraway,’ which I found to
be a loan from the Japanese, who learned the term from Western medicinal herbals and coined this
form. Ziran is also a recent loanword from Uyghur.
It appears that Chinese loanwords were used for spices that have arrived from a distance, so
that those from India, Indo-China, and West Asia, and the Southeast Asian spices, such as nutmeg and

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cloves, received Chinese names. A doubtful case is doukou ‘cardamom,’ because it might represent an
early Southeast Asian loan hidden by a partial phono-semantic matching, as discussed in Section 4.3.

Figure 5.7 The diffusion of spice terminology in Arabic, focusing on loanwords and
Wanderwörter. For a full interactive version, please visit
https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/partigabor/phd-the sis-
viz/blob/main/diffusion_ar.html

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Figure 5.8 The diffusion of spice terminology in Chinese, focusing on loanwords and
Wanderwörter. For a full interactive version, please visit
https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/partigabor/phd-thesis-
viz/blob/main/diffusion_zh.html

5.2.3 Temporal Trajectories: The Attestation of Spice Words

After the investigation of how spice names reached English, Arabic, and Chinese on spatial trajectories,
let us now look at how they have spread across time. One of the most exciting parts of this examination

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is the data that was collected regarding dates of attestation. In other words, I tried to find the earliest
possible mentions for each spice, and then combine this information in a way that enables us to see the
diffusion of spices throughout the history of a language and culture. This information is a valuable
indicator, as it shows the approximate times of the earliest contact and introduction of the materials. In
essence, we can grasp the history of the spice trade in the words for them: when they arrived, which
spices were the earliest to be recorded, and which ones make the latest additions to our vocabularies
and spice cabinets. Here as well, from the nearly 360 names, I have used the selected few that—for lack
of a better word—I marked with “default.” To make the attestation visualizations easy to read, I used only
the default terms, with a small number of historic terms that preceded the contemporary default ones.
This allows for less packed and cleaner plotting and offers a way to compare the attestations in the three
languages.
The following figures should give a bird’s eye view of the history of the spice domain, and its
mark on vocabulary. In Figures 5.9 to 5.11, you can see the timeline of the spice nomenclature language
by language. Not surprisingly, these figures show that the native spices that are to be found the closest
to the homeland of the ancestors of English, Arabic, and Chinese speakers, have been recorded first. See
dill and fennel in English, saffron and fenugreek in Arabic, and Sichuan pepper and cassia in Chinese. If
we reflect back on the geographical origins of the spices (Figure 5.4) the figures also show which are the
earliest products of transnational trade: those that spread first, despite the fact that their origins were
distant and unknown to the early recipients. Primarily, these are pepper and ginger, which, as already
discussed, were ideal candidates for dispersion because of their resistance to long-haul transportation
and high scores of (biological) spreadability.
In the final trilingual graph in Figure 5.12, I have a produced a compact version of the same data,
arranged by language. This offers a chance to compare the main attestation periods for these items, and
I added an accompanying histogram to make it easier to see which periods have seen the emergence of
new spice words, indicating flourishing periods of both literature and trade.
Looking at Figure 5.12, we can observe a few trends at a glance. First of all, it is clear that
Chinese—the language with the longest literary tradition out of the three languages—has the earliest
attested spice words, primarily jiao ‘pepper,’ originally referring to the indigenous Sichuan pepper, but
now also used to denote black pepper and chili pepper especially. In this sense, jiao is the equivalent of

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English pepper and Arabic fulful. Jiao is followed in time by gui and rougui, referring to the spice we know
and use as cinnamon (but which is actually cassia), a tree native to the South of China, in the immediate
proximity of the ancient Chinese heartland. As for jiang ‘ginger’—also attested at a very early date—I
have already mentioned the reasons for its early diffusion and consequent inclusion into the medicinal
and culinary traditions of ancient peoples worldwide. The attestation dates of other spices are
distributed evenly starting from the fourth-fifth centuries, which marks the introduction of Buddhism
into China from Central Asia along the Silk Roads, entering through the Gansu corridor. Besides monks
carrying saffron, and asafoetida, we must not forget the many nomads and traveling traders, who likely
introduced pepper as well—literally meaning (nomadic) barbarian-pepper in Chinese—before the
emergence of the Sogdians responsible for the introduction of many articles of trade during the Tang
dynasty. The attestation of many spice names in the modern period is worth noting, because these
include spices that were known previously but not distinguished (caraway seeds were not considered a
separate spice from cumin, but were surely known in the Western Regions), or spices that were (are?)
not used traditionally (allspice, anise, Ceylon cinnamon).

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year
Figure 5.9 Attestation timeline for spice terms in English

Second, there is an obvious jump in the attested Arabic terms in the eighth century, which is
considered the start of the Islamic golden age. During this time, science and literature flourished under
the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid, and in the “House of Wisdom”170 in Baghdad, the largest city in the

170 The House of Wisdom (Arabic: Bayt al-Ḥikmah) refers to a large library and/or academy famous for the voluminous
translation work that produced an output of scientific literature from all sources and traditions including Greek, Roman,
Persian, Indian, and the Arabic literature that built on and advanced the various sciences. Recently it has been suggested that
the House of Wisdom was not an actual library but rather a metaphor referring to the active scientific community as a whole
during early Abbasid dynasty. The library—if it existed—perished during the total destruction of Baghdad in 1258 by the
hands of Hülegü and the Ilkhanid Mongols, thus little archeological evidence remains.

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world at the time (Gutas, 1998). It is worth noting that many of these terms became part of the Arabic
vocabulary certainly much earlier than the attestation dates, but since the Arabic literary tradition
begins with the compilation of the Quran (shortly after the death of Prophet Muhammad in 632), we
have little early documentary evidence. The earliest example would be from the Jahiliyya171 era poet Imru’
l-Qays, whose poetry includes the word fulful/filfil ‘pepper.’

Figure 5.10 Attestation timeline for spice terms in Arabic

171 Literally meaning ‘ignorance,’ this term refers to the pre-Islamic period of Arabia.

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Figure 5.11 Attestation timeline for spice terms in Chinese

Third, English features a set of spices that were attested in Old English, many known to the
Romans since Biblical times, such as pepper and cinnamon. But we can also see the years in which
Europe became acquainted with further oriental spices after the Crusades, when Westerners who had
acquired a taste for lavish Eastern flavors started to bring them home.
The next, relatively minor, step is to add the feature of borrowings to the graph, to see
chronologically which terms were borrowed, and which were native inventions.

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Figure 5.12 Comparative timelines for attested spice terms in English, Arabic, and
Chinese, indicating borrowings. For a full interactive version, please visit
https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/partigabo r/phd-thesis-
viz/blob/main/attestation_and_borrowing_compact.html

5.2.4 The Donor Languages

So who loaned these words? Which languages and civilizations are responsible for transmitting,
transmutating, and disseminating the terms of the spice domain? From the etymological dataset I have
extracted the participating languages. In order of their frequency, they are: Latin, Sanskrit, Persian,
Ancient Greek, Aramaic, French, Akkadian, Old French, Arabic, Proto-Iranian*, Unknown, Middle Indo-
Aryan*, Semitic*, Dravidian*, Iranian*, Anglo-Norman, Hungarian, Spanish, English, Pali, Egyptian
(Ancient), Proto-Dravidian*, Uyghur, Turkic*, West Germanic*, Romance*, Proto-Sino-Tibetan*, Old
Chinese, Old Tamil, Sauraseni Prakrit, Late Latin, Old English, Middle Chinese, Hindi, Tokharian B,
Sogdian, Slavic*, Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian, Japanese, Classical Nahuatl, Hellenistic Greek, Ancient
Hebrew, and Mandarin Chinese. Language families/branches, and proto languages are marked by an
asterisk.
To give this batch of information some meaning, I have broken down this data according to our

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three reference languages, English, Arabic, and Chinese. You can consult this in Figure 5.13. This bar chart
shows the top 5 languages that have played a role in carrying loanwords of the spice domain, at any given
stage, whether they are the source or a transmitting language. Regarding source, Figure 5.14 shows the
top 5 source languages of the loanwords of the spice domain.

Donor language 50
Latin
French
Ancient Greek
Old French
Medieval Latin 40
Old French Medieval Latin
French
Persian 30
Ancient Greek Pahlavi
Sanskrit
Aramaic Akkadian
Akkadian 20
Aramaic
Pahlavi Latin
Tokharian B
Proto-Iranian
Sanskrit Arabic
Arabic 10 Proto-Iranian
Tokharian B Sanskrit
Persian
Persian
0
English Arabic Chinese

Figure 5.13 Top donor languages of English, Arabic, and Chinese loanwords in the
spice domain

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Source language Arabic

Latin 16
Ancient Greek Semitic
Sanskrit 14
Semitic Sanskrit Aramaic
12 Egyptian (Ancient)
Arabic
Persian
Akkadian 10 Ancient Greek
Persian Iranian Akkadian
Egyptian (Ancient) 8
Proto-Iranian
Aramaic Latin
Proto-Iranian 6 Arabic
Iranian Sanskrit Sanskrit
4

2
Ancient Greek
0
English Chinese Arabic

Figure 5.14 Top source languages of English, Arabic, and Chinese loanwords in the
spice domain

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6. THE LA NGUAGE O F SPI CES

Now that the detailed explanation of the diffusion of spices is complete, let us examine spice names.
Throughout this chapter, I will look at the terminology comparatively, using three sets of names
representing spice nomenclature in English, Arabic, and Chinese. This chapter constitutes the results
and findings of my analysis of the terms of the spice domain, from linguistic-cognitive perspectives.
I will start with an overview of the data and the results in numbers, and then I will thematically
introduce certain aspects of the terminology, guiding the reader from general questions of analyzability
and structure toward more nuanced probings that will shed light on the composition, rationale, and
motivations behind spice names. The aim of this section is to achieve an understanding of how spice
names are formed, what the components of typical spice names are, and why languages use these
elements. At the end of this chapter, a close look into the names of one specific spice will show how we
can apply the findings.

6 .1 O V E RV I E W : S P I C E N A M E S IN NUMBERS

Figure 6.1 The distribution of spice names across the three languages.

As a result of the data collection set forth in chapter 4, the spice name dataset now contains 360 spice
names. Of these, 154 are in English, 86 are in Arabic, and 120 are in Chinese: Figure 6.1 shows this
distribution. The total number is the result of the lengthy process of carefully compiling the

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nomenclature for the set of spices as defined at the beginning of the study, which consists of twenty-four
different spices. The data collection methods were detailed in Section 3.2. Combing through dictionaries
and the literature, I quickly realized that the vast accumulation of spice names means that there is no
feasible way to compile the infinite aromatic plant products of the world, and certainly not their many
names—and therefore this project is essentially endless. This can spark both stress and joy; on the one
hand, I am relieved that I chose only two dozen relatively well-known spices and not more, while on the
other I am excited to see that there is room to grow: there are more aromatics to include, more names to
examine, and more things to learn.
On average, a spice in my dataset has 14 names, where the max is 44 (chile), and the min is 4
(fenugreek and mace). Figure 6.2 shows the top ten and the bottom ten spices that have the most and
least number of names, including all three languages. Employing this figure might raise some eyebrows,
regarding its legitimacy, but in fact it is a very good indicator of which spices are more complicated in
their nomenclature overall, and therefore which are the most problematic to untangle. As we can see,
spice plants that boast many names include the chili pepper, Sichuan pepper, and cassia and the so-
called false cardamoms, spices that are rich in variety. On the other hand, there is also allspice, which
has no variety at all but offers a confusing and unclear set of names across the three languages. These
are—not incidentally—the very items that I have dedicated substantially more pages to than some of
their peer spices, due to issues about their identity or the complexity and richness of their nomenclature.
This seems to go hand in hand with matters of biodiversity: chile has countless varieties that have spread
to faraway corners of the earth, and in fact it is now a hobby in its own right to cultivate, breed, and
crossbreed hot chile cultivars. As we saw, Sichuan pepper species are used across vast regions in East
Asia (mainly in China), and it can cause a headache to try to pin them down exactly, since their
“boundaries” and varieties are not that well-defined—especially to those outside East Asia. It needs
some explanation to untangle and isolate the various sources of cassia types as well.

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 (a) (b)
Figure 6.2 Top 10 spices with the largest number of names (a), and bottom 10 spices with the smallest number of names

(b)

Figure 6.3 Top 5 spices with the largest number of names, by language

On the other hand, spices with the lowest number of names are presumably the most straightforward
items: take, for example, cloves or vanilla. But what makes a spice “straightforward,” or, in other words,
simple? In my opinion, it is its uniqueness and recognizability. Indeed, if we reflect on our investigation

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on vanilla in the last section of the data chapter, we have already established that it is a rather special
item: there is no other spice that is made from the fruits of an orchid, no other spice that is obtained
from crystals of long dark brown beans, and no other spice that is sold in liquid form—it is unique. Or,
if we think of cloves, they are unmistakable in their shape, and in many languages they are designated
by their shape. These two items are also very well circumscribed in terms of their geographic origins.
Although now cultivated in multiple tropical regions, vanilla is known to be from the jungles of Central
America and Brazil, so there is no doubt about its origins. The native habitat of cloves is even more
narrow, as it is only indigenous only to North Maluku and the “spice islands” of Makian, Ternate, and
Tidore. We see nutmeg and mace as well among the bottom five items having the least number of names,
and we should notice that nutmeg and its mace are also from this region: they were exclusively found on
the Banda islands of Maluku, and nowhere else, until the second half of the eighteenth century. Now it
makes a bit more sense to look at these same charts deconstructed by language, as seen in Figure 6.3.
The most conspicuous feature of these pie charts is that chili has the most names, across every language.

6 .2 T H E A N A LY S I S OF S P I C E N O M E N C L AT U R E

This section presents the analysis of spice names, trying to answer the main question: How do people
name spices, and, specifically, new spices that they came into contact with? Immediately, we can think
of two ways: languages either borrow, or conceive a name. We saw the borrowed element in the previous
chapter, and now we will dive into how the naming process exactly works. What are the structural
requirements and salient features that influence the creation of a name? How do languages invent and
generate new names for novel materials and substances? In an attempt to give answers to these questions,
I took a bottom-up approach and looked at all 360 names of the 24 spices from the data I collected to
arrive at some conclusions.
So what kinds of spice names are there? What does a typical spice name looks like? Intuitively,
we can instantly identify two core types of names along the lines of their structure: basic and modified.
Basic would describe a monomorphemic or a derived word that refers to a prototype spice, without any
distinguishing word, e.g., cardamom. Modified could refer to compounds and noun phrases that use a
spice name as a headword, but that also have a modifier for purposes of identification and
disambiguation, e.g., green cardamom, black cardamom, true cardamom, false cardamom, Nepal
cardamom, Ethiopian cardamom, round cardamom, lesser cardamom, greater cardamom, hill cardamom,

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etc. We can also discern the wide range of categories of the modifiers referring to color, shape, size,
geographic origin, and even positive and negative evaluations of perceived authenticity. A spice term
can also have a modifying word to specify the plant part as well: this can be observed most commonly
for spices that are known also as plants, or other parts of which are used as well, or the same part is used
in other forms (e.g.., ground or powdered). In English this is usually attached after the headword,
similarly to a regular suffix. Examples include: cumin seed, coriander-seed, aniseed, ginger root, etc. After
consulting intuition, let us consider a more formal analysis.

6.2.1 Analyzability and Structure

Analyzability of words is originally an idea from the twentieth-century philological movement and
method Wörter und Sachen (words and things, in German), which had a big influence on linguistics and
ethnography. Outlined by Hugo Schuchardt and based on the titular journal Wörter und Sachen started
by Indo-Europeanist Rudolf Meringer in 1909, it proposed the close study of the etymology of words
together with the artifacts/concepts they name (Ortutay, 1977–1982). Meringer wrote in 1906: “Ohne
Sachwissenschaft keine Sprachwissenschaft mehr!” (There is no more linguistics without the study of
material culture!). Practically speaking, analyzability meant that the more opaque a name is in terms of
morphological analysis, the longer it is assumed to be present in the language. A basic example would
be York (monomorphemic) vs. New York (analyzable), which provides a potential chronology for the
concepts the words signify. This approach was incorporated into historical linguistic research and
philology, often studied in parallel with findings in archeology (Ortutay, 1977–1982).
Haspelmath and Tadmor (2009a, p. 12) also used the term “analyzability” in the creation of their
loanword database (The World Loanword Database [WOLD]) as a first step in assessing a word’s loanword
status, although in a purely linguistic way. I have applied a simplified version of this annotation, and
indicated whether a word was (1) unanalyzable, (2) semi-analyzable, (3) or analyzable. Items are semi-
analyzable if the situation is morphosyntactically complex. For example, in the case of “cranberry words”
(compound words where only half of the term is semantically transparent: we can understand ‘berry’
alone, but not ‘cran’) such as fenugreek, where an English speaker could decipher the element Greek, but
would be left in the dark with fenu-, or the Arabicized loanwords from Persian, dārṣīnī ‘cinnamon’ or
dārfilfil ‘long pepper,’ where both ṣīnī ‘Chinese’ and filfil ‘pepper’ would be understood, but Arabic
speakers would not know what to do with dār (which coincidentally means ‘house’ in Arabic, but that is

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from the Persian ‘wood’). A Chinese example could be huluba ‘fenugreek,’ where hu ‘barbarian’ is the
same character that is found in hujiao ‘black pepper,’ pointing to its foreign origins, but the whole word
itself would be difficult to decode, since it is in part a phono-semantic matching for Arabic ḥulba
‘fenugreek.’ Sometimes the Chinese term uses the first character 葫, which is a phono-semantic
compound of hu ‘barbarian’ (after its sound value), and cao ‘herb’ for its meaning, making the loanword
origin more obvious.

Table 6.1 Analyzability of words in the spice name dataset

analyzability English Arabic Chinese

analyzable 111 50 99
unanalyzable 39 32 20
semi-analyzable 3 4 1

The analyzability of a word is strongly interlinked with its structure, which can be simple or
monomorphemic (e.g., hing), compound (e.g., stinking gum), or phrasal (e.g., devil’s dung). Asafoetida
would be considered a compound only by those familiar with either Latin or with the history and
meaning of the word. Even so , asa is a cranberry morpheme, and foetida ‘fetid’ might not be immediately
obvious, so it is a semi-analyzable compound.
Importantly, compounds that are coined within a language are not considered loanwords, even
if they contain borrowed elements. Thus, while chili is considered a loanword, chili pepper is not. Of
course, there are always ambiguous cases: is black pepper a loanword? It depends on whether it is a
learned loan/semantic translation from Latin piper nigrum, or a genuine English invention; and for this
we have to dig deep into the history of words. To sum up, we could say that, if a word is
morphosyntactically complex, “it was almost certain that it was created by speakers of the language
rather than borrowed from some other language” (Haspelmath & Tadmor, 2009a, p. 12).
Words that are analyzable are most often compound in their structure, but there are a few
derived names as well. As English is an isolating language, it is less common to find derived words in it.
Derived terms do occur in Arabic, where a handful of spice names come from verbal roots originally

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referring to the method of acquisition, such as qirfa ‘cinnamon’ from qarafa ‘to peel, derind,’ or salīkha
‘cassia’ from salakha ‘to pull off, strip off; skin, flay.’ Other methods of word formation for generating spice
names in Arabic include the diminutive pattern: cf. the form fulayfila from fulful ‘pepper,’ equivalent to
‘capsicum.’ Another pattern forms an active participle in the feminine, as has been proposed in the case
of fāghira ‘Sichuan pepper’ from faghara ‘to open,’ alluding to the half-open, mouth-like pericarps of the
Zanthozylum species. There a few examples of phrasal names as well, such as the above-mentioned
devil’s dung, but most often these tend to be titles of praise rather than actual names, for example king
of spices ‘black pepper,’ queen of spices ‘cardamom,’ red gold ‘saffron,’ etc. Table 6.1 and Figure 6.4 show
the trilingual distribution of the analyzability of words. Closely related to analyzability is the question
of whether a term is borrowed or not, which I have already covered in the previous chapter on the
diffusion of spice words.

Figure 6.4 The ratios of the analyzable words in the spice name dataset

6.2.2 Spice Term Anatomy: Prototypes and Distinguishing Words

I have already mentioned that the vast majority of analyzable spice terms are compounds, and so let us
look at the anatomy of these. By far, most compounds are made up of two elements, sometimes three,
but even more are possible. Based on the principle of analyzability explained above we could rightfully
assume that the more elements a compound name has, the more culturally distant its origin is, and the
more unfamiliar its referent is to the speakers of the language. We saw in chapter 5 that the earliest
attested words are indeed short and monomorphemic in their form, such as dill, fulful ‘pepper,’ and gui
‘cassia.’ And in support of this theory we also saw that recently attested words are likely to be
polymorphemic compounds, such as Sichuan pepper, fulful ifranjī ‘allspice,’ and xilanrougui ‘cinnamon.’
In short, there is an obvious tendency moving from the simple toward the complex.
Every compound element has a headword, and one (or more) modifier(s). Take for instance sweet

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cumin, referring to ‘anise,’ where the headword is cumin, and the modifier is sweet. The use of cumin can
be explained by the prototype theory: to the person(s) who coined this term, cumin was an already
known, ideal prototype for anise, on account of their similarity in their appearance (indeed, the two
kinds of seeds look very similar, and they are related plants from roughly similar geographical origins
from the point of view of an English speaker). And so here we can determine that the rationale for use
of the headword is ‘prototype similarity’ on the basis of physical appearance. In most cases, the
motivation behind the creation of spice names is simply identification and disambiguation.172 Thus, a
distinguishing word is needed to differentiate from the original cumin, and this word here is sweet. The
distinguishing words or modifiers often arise from the most salient quality of the materials when
compared to the prototype item: in this case, the sweetness of anise.
The final thing to point out in this example is that sweet cumin is not merely an alternative name
of anise, it is an alias. Under “alias,” I am referring to the misleading quality of this name, and I would
like to emphasize that the prototype words could be used in two ways: matching or not matching. For
example: in the compound white pepper, the headword pepper is used as a matching prototype because
the referent of the prototype matches the referent of the whole compound (i.e., white pepper is really
pepper). Hence, white pepper is an alternative name that has the role of narrowing, specifying the
subtype of pepper in certain situations. Contrastingly, Jamaica pepper is an alias, because in the real
world the referent of the prototype and the referent of the compound do not match. In these cases, the
prototype is used as a headword on account of its similarity—whether physical, chemical, or other.
This difference in how prototypes fill in the role of the headword (matching or not) can have
serious real world implications, and it is the one single feature of spice names that can cause the biggest
confusion. If I may share a personal anecdote: one of my very close friends works in the family business
of importing and exporting various nuts and oil seeds. When a customer ordered a large shipment of
black cumin, her boss—her sister—mistakenly ordered cumin. Now, if my friend’s sister had glanced at
the report my friend made, she would have noticed immediately that black cumin (also known as nigella,
Nigella sativa) and cumin (Cuminum cyminum) are two different spices, from different families. The
mistake cost the company a lot, and a lesson was learned, but we can safely assume that this kind of

172 Another interesting type of motivation is promotion/advertisement, as in the case of grains of paradise, where the
creation of the name was intended to make the spice more desirable for European buyers. Cf. xiangcao ‘fragrant-grass/herb’

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mixup happens regularly. To be clear, I do not want to “fix” the usage of common names in this discussion,
but rather I am simply trying to explore and explain why there is confusion between certain materials,
so that I can organize and present it in a way that it one day might be useful as a trustworthy checklist
or master list of spice names. For now, I believe that consulting botanical names is still the safest way
avoid accidents like this.
By the way, to make things still worse, there are more than one spice that can be called black
cumin besides nigella; Bunium bulbocastanum (a.k.a. great pignut), and especially Elwendia persica (black
seed, black cumin, black caraway) is often confused with the black seeds of nigella. It is not uncommon
for a name to be used for the products of different aromatic plants, and this is a source of confusion.

Headwords and Prototypes

When it comes to frequent headwords, we will most often find them to be spice name prototypes—both
those matching and not matching the referent of the whole compound, for example, the prototype words
for pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, and fennel occur in high numbers. The top most frequent headwords
can be seen in Figure 6.5. There are also headwords that do not refer to spices, but rather signify other
plant parts and products, such as Arabic jawz ‘nut’ (with the primary sense of ‘walnut’ but by extension
any nut) as in jawz al-ṭīb [nut-of-fragrance] ‘nutmeg.’ Arguably the most salient feature of the nutmeg is
its nut-like appearance, and English also testifies to this. Another example could be the words for gum,
referring to the useful part of the ferula plant, asafoetida. Headwords that allude to the function, role,
and usage of the substances are also present: consider the spice in allspice and bahār ‘spice’ in bahār ḥulw
[sweet-spice].

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Figure 6.5 Top 5 headwords appearing in spice names, by language

Figure 6.6 Top 5 headword types in spice names, by language

To provide a broad and complete overview of how headwords operate, I have tried to categorize them.
According to the usage, most headwords are prototype words used because they are similar to the item
that bears the name, followed by cases when the prototypes are used in a “matching” way. The rest are a
few cases that utilize words of plant parts, function, taste, shape, and color in their headwords as the
most salient elements.

Modifiers and Distinguishing Words

When it comes to modifiers, we can see that the most prominent distinguishing words are adjectives of
color, taste, size, shape, but also, unmistakably, modifiers pointing to geographical origins. Names of
countries, regions, cities, perceived or real sources of spices are the most prevalent category here. Figure
6.7 shows the top five modifiers across the three languages.

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 Figure 6.7 Top 5 modifiers appearing in spice names, by language

Figure 6.8 Top 5 modifier types in spice names, by language

Sensory words
Due to the highly stimulating nature of spices, sensory words often frequent the modifiers. In fact, after
distinguishing spices by their geographic origin, the second most common type of modifiers is words of
color. What are other salient qualities of perception when it comes to spices? It must taste and smell,
right? In my analysis, I have identified and categorized sensory words according to the sensory modalities
they operate in, and the results can be seen in Figure 6.9. It is clear that vision—generally accepted as
being part of the “higher senses” along with hearing—takes the highest ranks, and the “lower senses”
follow: words from the gustatory, olfactory, tactile, and thermal sensory domains.

Summary
The final question naturally is: What is the most common blueprint for a spice name? According to the
statistics of the dataset, the most common combination is prototype similarity + geographical origin.

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Therefore, names such as Indian cardamom, Ceylon cinnamon, and Chinese anise are the most typical
examples for naming a spice, where the headwords point to a different item of significant similarity.

Figure 6.9 Proportion of the sensory modalities among the modifier words that belong to a sensory domain

Therefore, Jamaica pepper, the first example we mentioned many pages ago in the introduction, is a fairly
regular spice name.

6 .3 S P I C E N A M E A N A LY S I S : T H E E X A M P L E OF S TA R A N I S E

Let us consider the nomenclature of star anise in the three languages. In English, there is the default
term star anise, which is a native invention, obviously after the fruit’s unmistakable appearance. On a
rare occasion, we have information on the exact time of star anise’s arrival in England, which is dated to
1588.173 The same inspiration for the name is found in most European languages, either influenced by
sixteenth-seventeenth-century spice dealer terminology, or devised based on their own noticing its
recognizable shape. I used the word “native,” even though the phrase is obviously mixed from an
etymological point of view: anise is a loanword ultimately from Greek. However, when faced with this
type of phrase, I consider that at the time of the contact situation, anise was already part of the English
lexicon—as well as star—therefore, this phrase was coined within English, and thus is deemed a native
creation. This practice is consistent with the approach taken by the team of Haspelmath and Tadmor
(2009b) at WOLD. English also has the term Chinese anise, which is a phrase consisting of anise, again,
and Chinese, referring to star anise’s geographical location and the origin of its procurement for the

173 OUP, n.d., star anise.

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English. The motivation behind this term could be due to the need to differentiate between Chinese and
Japanese star anise, two very similar items. Both phrases utilize the term anise, which refers to the small
anise seeds of the Mediterranean, used as a spice and as flavoring for liqueurs and confectionary. Why is
there a connection to anise? The two plants could not be more different, they are geographically distant,
and they are botanically unrelated. The only thing that connects them is their highly similar flavor profile,
dominated by the volatile oil anethole; the same “nauseating” and “sweet” chemical compound that is
found in fennel and licorice. And so, for the Europeans who were familiar with anise and its taste, the
novel product reminded them of anise’s aroma. Hence, the names are in part inspired by taste/plant
chemistry, defining anise as a prototype spice and prototype term. To avoid confusion (the existence of
which will be clear to anyone who tries to do a brief search about anise or star anise), distinguishing
words are used for the new material. These modifiers are attached to the headword, in one case inspired
by the spice’s shape, in the other referring to its geographical origin. The existence of the name Chinese
star anise could be explained by the fact that there is a Japanese star anise as well, a similar-looking but
poisonous fruit and tree, Illicium anisatum, as mentioned above. In short, the two phrases use different
ways to identify this spice. English also has an archaic form referring to star anise: badian, from French,
which arrived via a land route through Persian, and that might be a phonetic loan from Chinese, but for
which there is no documentary evidence.174
Arabic yansūn najmī [star anise] was a name devised along similar lines, using a native Arabic
word for ‘star,’ the prototype word is anise, and the more interesting instances are to be found in
neighboring Persian. Bādyān khatā’ī or khatāyī [star anise] is star anise, while bādyān rūmī [Roman anise]
is anise.175 Bādyān alone could also refer to fennel.176 This shows that, in Persian, the prototype word was
bādyān.
As for Chinese, we do not find any loanword among the terms used to refer to star anise: all
names are local “inventions.” The modern “proper name” for star anise is bājiǎohuíxiāng [eight-horn-hui-
spice], where [eight-horn] means ‘octagonal,’ and [hui-spice] is fennel, and therefore it can be translated
as ‘octagonal fennel,’ or ‘eight-horned fennel.’ Another name, dàhuíxiāng ‘big-fennel’ strengthens the

174 OUP, n.d., badian.

175 Hayyim, 1934–1936, vol. 1, p. 197.

176 Steingass, 1892, p. 140.

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assumption that, in Chinese, huíxiāng ‘fennel’ is the prototype. Again, the flavor profiles of fennel and
anise are basically identical, hence the connection (and confusion). The formal Chinese names of star
anise are not attested in historical corpora, and I assume that the vernacular name of bājiǎo [eight-horn]
was first applied to star anise, and the formal name was modelled later, driven by the plant sciences. In
modern dialects star anise is also referred to as huíxiāng ‘hui-spice’ (historically ‘fennel’) and dàxiāng
‘big-spice.’ In modern TCM, fennel is referred to as xiǎohuíxiāng ‘little-huispice,’ contrasting the two
spices that are often confounded because of their similar taste usage, and size. In fact, the Chinese 大/
小 dà/xiǎ ‘greater/lesser’ contrast is not necessarily a marker of size, but rather a semantic tool to convey
unmarked/marked, or proper/imitator.
To summarize the points I intended to make above: first, I determined whether the words and
phrases are analyzable (morphologically, syntactically, semantically), then I examined those names
further, while also stating why a specific item is unanalyzable. E.g., badian as a loanword does not carry
any useful information for an English speaker who is not familiar with the word, thus it cannot be
dissected or interpreted alone. Next, I looked at the borrowed status of the names to determine if the
word or phrase is borrowed, or was devised locally. E.g., the Chinese names are native lexical creations,
while English and Arabic use a non-native headword (anise/yansūn) and a native distinguishing word
(star/najmī). Finally, I looked at the inspirations behind these lexical inventions and identified the
rationale and motivation behind them. For phrases and compound words, we can separate a headword
(usually a prototype noun), and a modifier or distinguishing word (usually an adjective). In each case,
we can discern the reasons that prototype word was used, and what feature of the prototype item (the
referent) is the most salient. The same is true for the distinguishing word(s). For example, star anise is
named so after (1) similarity in taste + (2) shape; and Chinese star anise is named so after (1) similarity in
taste + (2) shape + (3) geographic origin. In Table 6.2, you can see a concise overview of the analysis of
star anise terminology.

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Table 6.2 Comparative analysis of the names of star anise in English, Arabic, and Chinese

Term Gloss Analyzability Borrowed Prototype Modifier

star anise analyzable native similarity in taste shape
badian unanalyzable borrowed
Chinese anise analyzable native similarity in taste origin
Chinese star anise analyzable native similarity in taste shape + origin
yansūn najmī star anise analyzable native similarity in taste shape
bājiǎo octagonal analyzable native shape
bājiǎohuíxiāng octagonal-fennel analyzable native similarity in taste shape
bóhuíxiāng ship-fennel analyzable native similarity in taste shape
dàhuíxiāng big-fennel analyzable native similarity in taste size*
dàliào big-ingredient analyzable native function size*

From this perspective, the spice names are layered. Intuitively, the more layers a spice name has, the
more distant the item is culturally from its origin. And conversely, the fewer the components a term has,
the more familiarity with the substance is presumed (e.g., anise vs. star anise in English), and this reflects
back nicely to the idea of the analyzability of words introduced before. Therefore, spice names’ modifiers
can be categorized according to what salient feature contributed the most to the naming, and in this
specific case, it is star anise’s distinctive shape. As we will later see, shape is just one of many properties
that can distinguish/identify a spice; for others, alternative properties are salient, including color, taste,
smell, and the geographical origin mentioned. Furthermore, these names reflect the materials’ physical
qualities, and the perception and importance of a spice for various sensory modalities in the human
experience: vision, gustation, olfaction, etc.

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7. CONCLUSION

Bringing my project to a close, I will now summarize what was done here and reflect on the findings and
their implications. Then I will try to answer the research questions, revisit the aims stated in the
beginning, and mention some of the limitations and future plans. To summarize what I did, I should start
with mentioning the datasets. I have collected data in three stages: (1) on a set of spices, (2) on their
names, and (3) on their related etymologies. I have done so, because from the literature it was obvious
that there is a gap regarding research of spice terminology and nomenclature, which leads to chaos and
confusion in the secondary sources. I hope that this work is a step forward toward a future database of
spice names that can be useful for both academics and the public. The datasets are unique in that they
incorporate botanical information; are rich in philological considerations regarding sources, attestation
dates, and etymological stages; and accommodate three major world languages: English, Arabic, and
Chinese. I have introduced six of the twenty-four spices in greater detail, discussing their significance,
uses, botany, history, and names (chapter 4), with the aim of developing a deeper understanding of these
specific items from a comparative perspective.
Then, the collected terms allowed for an analysis on the linguistic diffusion of spices, which I
discussed in parallel with the physical diffusion of the plants and materials. I have illustrated the spatial
spread of English, Arabic, and Chinese loanwords and Wanderwörter of the spice domain using
interactive geospatial visualizations (chapter 5). For the temporal dimension, I have illustrated the
attestation dates on timelines, comparing clusters of attestation dates and borrowings across the three
languages.
My findings show that, beside the interest and demand, or the volume of trade at certain times,
one of the most important factors in a spice’s—and its name’s—successful diffusion is in its ability to
survive in new environments, alive or dead. By successful I mean widespread and long-lasting. Whether
it is the enduring rhizomes of ginger and turmeric waiting to sprout on the decks of outrigger boats on
the Pacific, the dried fruits of pepper capable of resisting spoilage for years in Roman warehouses, or the
easy-to-grow, ever-thriving American chile that Asians everywhere so quickly learned to cultivate, it is
the “ecological willingness” to adapt and persist that was crucial in the widespread diffusion of these
plants and materials. I tried to describe all this with a rudimentary measure I call a spreadability index.
Lastly, I have looked into the various spice names, and the underlying mechanisms of spice name

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propagation, to explain how novel substances are named in this domain. I have compared the three
languages by the terms’ analyzability, borrowed status, and word formation strategies, and I conducted
analysis on the headwords and modifiers of compound spice terms. This yielded some insights into the
motivations and strategies behind the invention and derivation of spice names, and also let us observe
the influence of these substances’ highly sensory natures, marked by words of color, taste, smell, shape
and form (chapter 6).
The overall finding of this chapter was that, on one hand, the headword is usually a prototype
spice, an item already known to the speakers of the language and similar in some ways to the novel item
to be named after it. A prototype spice word can have two roles, first on account of its similarity denoting
a mismatching spice (i.e., Chinese parsley is not parsley), or with a specifying modifier applied to a
matching spice (i.e., true cardamom is cardamom). Prototype similarity can be based on any salient
qualities of the substance: whether it is the chemical constituents resulting in a similar flavor (anise →
star anise), the function/use as a pungent culinary spice (pepper → chili pepper; long pepper), or
physical similarity (pepper → Jamaica pepper). Of course, these qualities are never exclusive. On the
other hand, we learned that these modifiers are most likely distinguishing words that point to a source
of geographic origin (e.g., Chinese, Indian, foreign), and sensory words of color, smell, or taste that
disambiguate, specify, and identify different products (e.g., black, red, green, sweet, fragrant, hot, etc.).
We learned that, statistically, the most typical spice name is one with the blueprint of prototype similarity
headword + geographic origin modifier, e.g., Jamaica pepper, Indian saffron, Ethiopian cardamom. We
might call these regular spice terms, and it is interesting to notice that at the same time, these are aliases,
hiding spices with different identities behind better known prototype items. Is this the reason many of
us are confused by spice names?

Answers
In Section 2.2.2, I asked some initial research question that I expected to find answers to.
Q1 was: “Does the propagation of Wanderwörter within the domain of the spice trade follow the
diffusion of the materials?” The answer to this question is overwhelmingly yes; however, we found some
exceptions. Notably, a few terms actually outpaced their respective referent materials and reached a
language before the speakers were familiar with the material itself. According to my analysis of the
dataset of twenty-four spices, this always happened via the dispersion of religious texts. In the West, the

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best examples are cassia and cinnamon, words that appear in the Bible, and, with the wind of Christianity,
these words reached places far beyond the Eastern Mediterranean, well before the actual materials did.
In the East, our only certain example for this phenomenon is Chinese xingyu/xingqu ‘hing’ (asafoetida),
which spread with Buddhist texts from the Silk Roads of Central Asia, before Chinese monks had ever
seen the gum-resin. When the product arrived a century later, it came with a new name, awei, which was
a loan from a Kuchean word. This is the name by which it is known today.
Q2 was: “Is there any underlying pattern behind the mechanisms of spice diffusion, considering
both the materials and the nomenclature?” The answer was explained above, with the findings shown in
“mapping the language of spices” about the diffusion of spices discussed in chapter 5. The diffusion of
the words strongly correlates with the diffusion of the materials—which is not surprising, but rather
expected—and the patterns show that the etymological stages reflect the prevalance of trade situated
on the crossroads connecting the source of the materials and major communities having an urge to have
them. The findings also show that, besides the human factor, the ecology of the plants and the materials’
resistance to damage or rot during long-haul trade have also played a great role.
Regarding Q3: “Is there any influence on the naming of spices, in terms of sensory words and
synesthetic properties?” I have found that the sensory nature of spices plays a role in their names in two
ways. One, compound spice names usually contain a headword that is a previously known prototype
spice, on account of their physical (appearance, color, shape, form) and chemical (taste, aroma, heat,
pungency) similarity; and two, distinguishing words are also frequently sensory words of vision,
gustation, or olfaction, as we saw in chapter 6. However, despite the rich sensory nature of spices, the
names are most typically modified with a geographic place name. This suggests that, even if spices are
colorful and aromatic, nevertheless often their most salient feature is their exoticism.

Aims revisited
Overall, the aims stated in the introduction were achieved. First of all, there is a framework and a
database that—although far from perfect—can be a basis for future endeavors in the research of the
terminology of aromatic materials, and this can be useful and interesting for philologists, linguists,
historians, or culinary professionals. I would like to highlight again that this dataset is machine-readable,
and after further expansion can accommodate various statistical analytics regarding the spices, and
various aspects of their names. The dataset also facilitates the detailed treatment of other spices, beyond

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the six that were introduced in the data chapter (chapter 4, “The Spices”), many of which have yet to be
published on from a humanities’ perspective.
The second aim was “to map the diffusion of the terms of the spice domain,” and I hope the
interactive visualizations under Figures 5.6 to 5.8177 are adequate to illustrate the significance of these
wandering words. The visualizations are based on the etymological data collected and explained in this
paper , and they are openly available in the same repository.178
The third goal was to shed light on how spice names are “born,” and what the motivations and
mechanisms might be for spice name propagation. I feel that the findings of chapter 6 achieves this goal,
as we now know how the three languages borrowed words, and how they devised new names based on
existing words, and what are the typical components in this process.

Significance and Contribution

At the beginning of this paper, I talked about the puzzle of a particular tree and its spice having different
names in various languages. As we saw, this turned out to be allspice. I hope that the motivation and
reasons behind its many names—allspice, newspice, clove pepper, Jamaica pepper—is no longer a
mystery. Furthermore, I hope that the next time the reader is faced with the name of a novel spice term,
he or she can analyze it, ponder its origins, and look up its history. I think that if we go about with open
eyes and noses, we will sense the surrounding variety every day, embodied in the aromas. And the next
time my grandmother in Hungary is making sausage, I can tell her that the “clove pepper” she is using is
from the Caribbean, and that even if Columbus never found it, it eventually arrived to this side of the
planet—only to be confused with every other spice under the sun by the many confusing ways we named
it.
The significance of this study lies in its topic; spices are a ubiquitous part of our cuisine and
culture. Everyone who ever had a dinner party at home—including the cooking—in a multicultural,
multilingual setting knows that the nomenclature of spices and seasonings is confusing and interesting,
and that each spice name carries the history of the spice. My contribution is an attempt to collect,
introduce, and analyze them in a way that was not done before.

177 Hosted on https://github.com/partigabor/phd-thesis-viz

178 Hosted on https://github.com/partigabor/phd-thesis-viz/data.

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7 .1 L I M I TAT I O N S

This project has a number of limitations. First, it was not possible to include more spices in this short
space. I firmly believe that the more aromatic items we add into the fold, the more firm the results would
be in terms of claiming something universal about the terms of the spice domain. The present study
encompasses 24 spices and 360 names, and it feels to me that that is just enough to start suggesting
generalizations about the diffusion and especially the naming of various aromatic substances.
I also maintain that there are some general truths that I can now claim to have shown, especially
regarding the globally important and well-known items that were popular from Asia to Europe, and
between the two endpoints of the Maritime Silk Road. Among these are the overwhelming East-to-West
directionality, which is supported by the botanical reality (most of these spices are from tropical Asia),
the historical evidence (the spice trade since antiquity, and in the Age of Discovery), and the linguistic
trail (cf. the source and donor languages). My opinion, based on the data here, is that the more aromatics
we add into the investigation, the proportion of the major donor languages will be similar. Words from
Latin, Greek, Arabic, Persian, Akkadian, Sanskrit, Chinese, etc. and other influential languages of high
culture since premodern times will “overpower” smaller regional languages from the source or path of
the materials. There are always exceptions, of course, but the influence of languages of empires and
civilizations with long-lasting influence is almost unquestionable.
Further limitations of my study arise from the fact that I tried to delimit my scope by focusing
on words that arrived to English, Arabic, and Chinese, and disregarding other interesting and related
cases.
In the etymologies, however, I ventured beyond the trilingual setting, and I believe that this kind
of study should be aware of any language of contact, and especially of influential languages of the source
words, e.g., Sanskrit. Beyond that, though, I believe that the trio of English, Arabic, and Chinese made for
an interesting comparative glimpse into the spice domain.
I introduced the notion of an existing research gap in the beginning of the paper (Section 2.2),
and now I believe it is impossible to fill that lacuna with a single work, even a book-length one. On the
one hand, it is not possible to be competent in every related language, and second, it is not feasible to
introduce every known spice accurately in a limited space. Maybe later, in the form of a larger book? I
am convinced, that this project could be valuable and interesting with a team of experts that can help

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7 .2 FUTURE STUDIES

For future studies, I think one valuable way to dive into the diffusion of spices, incense, perfume, and
other aromatics is to focus on a specific cultural area, for example, the Mediterranean, or Southeast Asia.
I have plans for a paper that tracks wandering food items—and their names—of East and Southeast
Asia.
For a slightly different take, it would be interesting to dive into lexical semantics and cognitive
linguistics relying on corpora and corpus linguistic tools. I have extracted words deriving from spice
terms from the relevant dictionaries, proceeding to analyze their dates of coinage and grouping them by
grammatical category. I wish to prove that the more familiar a culture is with a given item, the more
productive the item’s name is in its language. The projected study will focus on the spices’ role in daily
language, how spice words entered the lexicon, and what their role is in metaphors and idiomatic
expressions. And, most importantly, how do we conceptualize “spicy” words? It’s a topic that was recently
touched upon by Bagli (2021) in English, and Dong et al. (2018) and Zhong et al. (2021) in Chinese. The
goal of this question is to look at the degree in which spice terminology is used in a language, proposed
to be a gauge of a spice’s embeddedness in a culture, and to see how significant these are in the everyday
human experience.
I also hope to expand on the attempt to collect the names for a specific spice in every significant
language and plot their distributions grouped by etymon, an example of which is seen in Section 4.4.5.
In a more typological view, hopefully I can compare more spices similarly to find patterns and
correlations. The problem with this is that, while some products represent common and easy-to-collect
word lists from existing databases (e.g., pepper), rarer items would be much more difficult to gather.
However, the most crucial task for me is to make this project alive and breathing. For that
purpose, I have built a website to host a spice database currently named Spice and Spice Terminology
Database 1.0, accessible at https://partigabor.github.io/spice/. I hope in the future this can be a useful
portal for people to access information about spices and spice names. I will host the datasets and
visualizations, which people can query to learn about the nomenclature, etymologies, and diffusion of
spice terms. I plan to make this website a sort of philologically-focused spice directory, that is free and
open-access. Hopefully this platform offers an accessible way to gradually update, correct, and expand

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on the existing data. I also expect valuable input from other researchers in this area, not to mention the
tips and guidance of people who are expert in a certain language or subject that I am not. I definitely
plan to work on this topic for the long term, and I hope I can eventually collaborate with other scholars
including linguists, botanists, historians, and even culinary experts to build a rich and useful database
that supplies precise information.

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PRIMARY SOURCES

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