The name of eggplant was given it by Europeans in the middle of the eighteenth century because the variety they knew had fruits that were the shape and size of goose eggs. That variety also had fruits that are a whitish or yellowish colour rather than the wine purple that is more familiar to us nowadays. So the sort they knew really did look as though it had fruits like eggs.
In Britain, it is usually called an aubergine, a name which was borrowed through French and Catalan from its Arabic name al-badinjan. That word had reached Arabic through Persian from the Sanskrit vatimgana, which indicates how long it has been cultivated in India. In India, it has in the past been called brinjal, a word which comes from the same Arabic source as British aubergine, but filtered through Portuguese (the current term among English speakers in India is either the Hindi baingan, or aubergine).
reference:
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question...3050745AA7Lhsu
20-06-2009, 10:37 PM
العرض الشجري
