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…
Portuguese Orange, Persian Portugal
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Re: Portuguese Orange, Persian Portugal
#52Funny 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 )
Wikipedia says it is a hybrid between an orange and a pomelo, developed in Barbados.
Re: Portuguese Orange, Persian Portugal
#53Earlier 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.
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
#54Earlier 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?
Re: Portuguese Orange, Persian Portugal
#55Earlier 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?
Re: Portuguese Orange, Persian Portugal
#56Re: Portuguese Orange, Persian Portugal
#57Funny 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)