Live data from Hacker News

Portuguese Orange, Persian Portugal

untested.sonnet.io

51–57 of 57 posts

Re: Portuguese Orange, Persian Portugal

#51

Romanian language calls oranges "portocale" so definitely Persian origin by route of the Ottoman Empire. In Turkish it's "portakallar". Speaking of weird names, we don't call oranges orange but we do call tomatoes "reds" (roșii). And we call corn "pigeon" (porumb - from "palumbus" which is Latin for pigeon). To finish, the Romanian word for "chainsaw" comes from Russian but neither Romanians know what it means in Rus…

Author of the article here, I'm Polish and my partner is Romanian so it's always fun to find slavic words that exist in the Romanian vocab, especially if their original/literal meaning became obscure in Romanian. Examples: Dâmbovița (oak tree forest in PL, and yes -- there seems to have been an oak grove near the river), slănină (słonina in PL, which literally means elephant meat, but that's probably popular etymolog…

Maybe it originates in "cyka" :D (You know, сука блядь ;)

Re: Portuguese Orange, Persian Portugal

#52
post #8

Funny enough it seems in Persian there's no clear distinction between lime and lemon. My wife calls both "limoo". She does however claim there's a particular cultivars "limoo Shirin" that is supposedly very sweet (and hard to find outside of Iran)

What about toranj? I still have no idea which citrus fruit it is. I know that the traditional pattern in the middle of Persian carpets is called this way, and it has some significance in Sufi symbolism. (plus there's Toranj by one of my favourite modern Iranian musicians -- Mohsen Namjoo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a64OFz4PkkA )

In Portuguese "toranja" is a grapefruit, in English.

Wikipedia says it is a hybrid between an orange and a pomelo, developed in Barbados.

Re: Portuguese Orange, Persian Portugal

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about toranj? I still have no idea which citrus fruit it is. I know that the traditional pattern in the middle of Persian carpets is called this way, and it has some significance in Sufi symbolism. (plus there's Toranj by one of my favourite modern Iranian musicians -- Mohsen Namjoo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a64OFz4PkkA )

In Portuguese "toranja" is a grapefruit, in English. Wikipedia says it is a hybrid between an orange and a pomelo, developed in Barbados.

The weird thing is that (I think) in Persian grapefruit == گریپ فروت (grapefruit)

OK, to answer my own question: toranj == citron

https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/hayyim_query.py?qs=tor...

Re: Portuguese Orange, Persian Portugal

#54
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankish is what Farangistan and farangi was derived from. Referring to the Franks of course. I think it is from middle ages or earlier, if I’m not mistaken.

Oh. Is this where the Thai got the word Farang too?

I actually do not know. But there’s a wikipedia page on Farang that suggests this could be the case!

Re: Portuguese Orange, Persian Portugal

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankish is what Farangistan and farangi was derived from. Referring to the Franks of course. I think it is from middle ages or earlier, if I’m not mistaken.

Yes, but why?

Tomatoes were brought from the new world. Quick googling says Strawberries are also from Europe. That would give the Farang prefix.

Re: Portuguese Orange, Persian Portugal

#57
post #8

Funny enough it seems in Persian there's no clear distinction between lime and lemon. My wife calls both "limoo". She does however claim there's a particular cultivars "limoo Shirin" that is supposedly very sweet (and hard to find outside of Iran)

That seems bizarre, they’re different fruits, they taste different - how can you just call them both the same thing? Doesn’t that cause unnecessary confusion? Or do they just call them like ‘green thing’ and ‘yellow thing?’
Post reply on HN