But that's the interesting thing. I first came across that tidbit in a book
titled "The History of Corn", don't recall the author, but it was a ponderous
tome divided into chapters called: Botany, History, Religion, Cuisine,
Economics, etc. and each chapter looked at the entire history of corn from that
perspective. Fascinating.
It was there I garnered the fact that when, among others Benjamin Franklin,
was writing about a proposed wheat embargo to starve the rebelling colonists,
he said they couldn't care less because they had plenty of good bread in the
form of "hokek" which he explained was the local Algonquin word for cornbread.
We English speakers have a fascinating habit of hearing a term we don't quite
understand and converting it to the closest English word that fits it.
Everyone knows that Jerusalem artichokes have nothing to do with Jerusalem. They
are native to Virginia but in their wanderings around the kitchens of the world
seem to have made a lingering stop in Italy. The Jerusalem artichoke is a
type of of sunflower and when the Italians saw them growing they called them,
what else, sunflowers, or 'girasole'. English speakers, hearing the Italian
name for the tubers, thought someone might be trying to say "Jerusalem" and so
the name has stuck.
Here in the southern Appalachians the bush that bears pointy clusters of dry
berries which make a good citrusy drink are called Shoe-Make bushes. I often
wondered what they had to do with making shoes, until I found out that most
people call them "Sumac" bushes. Again, bending an unfamiliar word to fit a
common English word.
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