My wife and I are reading Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet (see this post), and at one point a character refers to having “a long cool drink of nimbo.” Naturally I wanted to know what this “nimbo” might be; after some frustration, I realized it was a variant of nimbu: “There may be no better drink for beating the heat than a nimbu soda, a lime-and-soda drink that’s ubiquitous in India.” But what’s nimbu? Well, Hindi नींबू (nīmbū) ‘lemon/lime (fruit or tree)’ (Urdu نیمبو) is from Sanskrit निम्बू (nimbū), which is “Of Austroasiatic origin; compare Mundari लेम्बु (lembu). Compare also Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *limaw (‘lime, citrus’), whence Malay limau (‘citrus’).” And this is where it gets interesting, because the long list of descendants of the Hindi/Urdu word includes Classical Persian لیمو (lēmū, līmū), from which is derived Arabic لَيْمُون (laymūn), borrowed into Old French as lymon, which is the source of English lemon. Furthermore, lime (the fruit) is:
[French, from Spanish lima, from Arabic līma, from Persian līmū, lemon, any of various citrus fruits; akin to Hindi nimbū and Gujarati lību, lime, of Austroasiatic origin; akin to Mundari (Munda language of Jharkhand, India) lembu.]
So lemon and lime are doublets; I probably knew that at some point, but I certainly didn’t know all the details, which are a lot of fun (note that Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *limaw gets turned around in Fijian and Polynesian and becomes moli). And now I want a long cool drink of nimbo.
I hadn’t realized, but now I do, that a species of citrus (the pomelo) had reached as far as Tonga in pre-European times. It was recorded by David Samwell, physician on Cook’s last voyage, as “moree, Shaddocks”. Another species,Citrus macroptera, reached as far as Samoa.
(Something about Welsh physicians messing around with languages.)
Li’em is the Kusaal name for this fruit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ximenia_americana#/media/File%3AHog_Plum_(Ximenia_americana)_(5963679978).jpg
Sadly, this must be sheer coincidence (also, although these things do taste vaguely lemony, they’re only the size of large plums, and are plum-like in consistency too.)
They seem to be called “tallow plums” in America. “Sea lemon” is apparently a name for them, too, though.
[Be careful not to confuse li’eŋ “Ximenia americana tree” with lieŋ “axe.” No refunds will be given. Vowel glottalisation matters, people!]
Preparing a nimby soda is so disgusting that people prefer doing it over the fence – crossing the limes into their neigbours garden.
I thought nimbu was the word for the fruit, and the name of the usual drink made with it was nimbu pani. Nimbu soda sounds like a neologism for the carbonated version languagehat linked to.
(I assumed, from the first time I encountered lime as a child, that it was a double ot lemon.)
So what you’re telling me is that the Proto-Austroasiatic word may well have started with l-, In Sanskrit that got changed to n-, and then Classical Persian had n > l dissimilation, which English and some other European languages ultimately inherited? Or maybe the Proto-Austroasiatic word started with n- and it got dissimilated to l- in Mundari and (separately?) in Classical Persian?
Yeah, that’s a mess of similation.
It’s also possible that Persian got the variant with l- from some other Indo-Aryan language, circumventing Sanscrit. Turner has a number of Indo-Aryan languages with l- (scroll down to entry 7247 nimbu-). In that case, it’s possible that there is only one assimilation, in Sanscrit.
It’s also possible that Persian got the variant with l- from some other Indo-Aryan language, circumventing Sanscrit.
On this point, M. Mayrhofer, Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen, vol. 3, s.v. nimbū has the following remark on this group (nimbū ‘lime’; limpāka- ‘citron or lemon tree’, etc., etc.):
There is a brief treatment of the possible Austroasiatic origin of this word family by F.B.J. Kuiper in the middle of page 84 here. As usual, Kuiper throws in everything and the kitchen sink.
See also from pp. 614f in T. Burrow (1945) “Dravidian Studies V.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 11(3) (abbreviations expanded):
As for further Austroasiatic connections… There is no mention of the group of Santali lembo, Mundari lembu, etc., in H.L. Shorto, A Mon-Khmer Comparative Dictionary. There is, however, this:
The Cantonese reflex 橘 gwat1 of this Middle Chinese form is the -quat in English kumquat and loquat, of course.
“Trying to taste the difference ‘tween a lemon and a lime / Pain and pleasure and the church bells softly chime” Note that as with salt-pepper the order is virtually always lemon-lime rather than lime-lemon. It may be otherwise in other languages, I suppose.
I’m not sure I have ever tasted the fruit called a citron in English. Standard Average European requires exactly two etymons for the lemon, lime, and citron, but permits any allocation among them.
Citron is the Hebrew etrog, used ritually in the autumn holiday of Sukkot. They are big. My father promised every year to get one and make marmalade, but never did.
Etrog at LH.
The Presbyterian farmer in Tulare County, California who back in the 1980’s had improbably become the U.S.’s only producer of rabbinically-approved etrogim died a few years ago at age 92, and then the first growing season after that with his son taking over was full of setbacks a lazy journalist would call Biblical in magnitude from the weather and otherwise, leading to a final harvest only 30% that of the previous year. (Linguistic note, the younger farmer pronounces the word “esrog,” as some Ashkenazim do.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20260323213412/https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-09-28/la-me-etrog-farm-sukkot
The same citrus-farming operation is also now providing orange blossoms used to flavor gin for the non-Sukkot market. https://www.fresnobee.com/living/food-drink/bethany-clough/article290914059.html
TIL the mess is even bigger than I thought. The biology is pretty complex (lots of hybrids).
German has Zitrone “lemon”, Limone which I thought meant “lime” but actually refers to some lemons or other (…green ones?), Limette which does mean “lime”, and, it turns out, Zitronatzitrone for the citron, where Zitronat and Orangeat are diced and candied peels. Oh, and, “lime” is not in the hybridization chart because it’s a cover term for a whole bunch of species and hybrids of Citrus and related genera.
David M.: TIL the mess is even bigger than I thought. The biology is pretty complex (lots of hybrids).
Yes, we’ve already been through Mucaceae and Cucurbitaceae — complex families of “pure” species, natural hybrids, and cultivars, and sorting them out could be important also for population history.
(OTOH, everything’s just going to end up in Brassica olaracea anyway.)
I think pretty much all rabbinically-approved etrog one can order nowadays is sourced from Israel. They are worthless to eat; having been bred for stability, they are quite dry.
@DE: Li’em is the Kusaal name for this fruit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ximenia_americana#/media/File%3AHog_Plum_(Ximenia_americana)_(5963679978).jpg
Sadly, this must be sheer coincidence (also, although these things do taste vaguely lemony, they’re only the size of large plums, and are plum-like in consistency too.)
They seem to be called “tallow plums” in America. “Sea lemon” is apparently a name for them, too, though.
After a bit of looking around, I think we call them “hog plums” and other names more often, though we may call the tree “tallow wood”. “Hog plum” is the only common name for the tree in Flora of North America.
According to Wikipedia, the distribution is tropical and subtropical from Mexico and Florida to Australia, and it’s never been domesticated. I wonder how it’s supposed to have gotten to all those places.
This hog plum/tallow wood has sent me down several branches of a rabbit hole, one of which led to the claim that this species was the subject of the first western botanical record made in what is now Australia.
Apart from that, I don’t remember coming across a distribution map that is so obviously based on political borders as the one in that Wikipedia article before now.
I wonder how it’s supposed to have gotten to all those places
Yes, I was wondering that too.
Most of the trees I know Kusaal names for are very distinctly African, like tɛ’ɛg “baobab.” (Which is one of the very few trees that I, as very much a non-botanist, can actually recognise.)
@Jonathan D: Something went wrong with your link (as happens with mine sometimes). Was it https://www.jstor.org/stable/41738950 ?
Anyway, that seems to hint that the tree wasn’t taken to Australia by Europeans.
@Hans and Xerîb: Thanks for the etymological points. Clearly I was oversimplifying.
@Brett: Wikipedia says that citrons have little juice if any and quotes Theophrastus and Pliny the Elder as saying that citron fruit wasn’t eaten except as medicine (hence Citrus medica?), so worthlessness for eating (except the candied peel) is nothing new.
@mollymooly: It seems to be quite likely that fruitcake contains candied citron peel, so maybe you’ve eaten that.
I guess that the fruit I had remembered as a juicier citron was probably some other member of the lemon-lime-citron species complex.
I have no doubt some useful plants were spread very early by humans, similar to how they later brought fish to lakes after the ice shield retreated.
It seems to be quite likely that fruitcake contains candied citron peel—the citrus in Irish fruitcake is “mixed peel”: candied orange and lemon peel, not even lime.
OTOH in my day, I have eaten many, many cakes, often abroad, in the sun and the dark, and it’s possible a citron slipped in. There would be no way of knowing.
I’ve made my own candied citrus peel, using lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruit.* I’ve also had candied citron peel and maybe one or two other varieties. As in most other applications, the oranges and lemons are distinctly better than the others.
* Don’t put the leftover sugar water on your compost heap. It’s actually fine as compost, but it attracts a lot of bees.
Danish fruit cakes are likely to contain diced sukat and pomeransskal. Sukat is the rind of Citrus medica, or possibly pomelo, pomeransskal that of Citrus aurantium (a.k.a. Seville orange, bitter orange, bergamotte). (What gender is that even supposed to be?)
Sukat is either from Italian succata (via Dutch) and in turn a conflation of Latin succus and zuccata, pumpkin boiled in sugar; or it’s got something to do with Hebrew sukhot. I’ve been told that the word kedron in New Testament Greek is the source of both citron and cedar and that the cedar cones sometimes found carved on woodwork in Christian churches originate as citron fruits served at the Jewish feast day.
What gender is that even supposed to be?
Citrus is feminine, as you’d expect of a tree name. I presume that the aurantium is either genitive plural of aurans, or just Biologists’ Bad Latin.
EDIT: Or just appositional: it looks like Citrus aurantium is for Citrus x aurantium*, as the name of a hybrid, rather than a form in Proper Linnaean (as spoken in ancient Linnaea.)
* As in Francis X McCarthy.
A friend mine made a joke to the effect that “i’m a lime, not a lemon” last night 🙂 It was a _really_ inside joke — as in a 25 years joke old. As In that’s how old we have known each other.
I have no doubt some useful plants were spread very early by humans, similar to how they later brought fish to lakes after the ice shield retreated.
I believe it, but X. americana doesn’t seem all that high on the present usefulness list, and more to the point, how did it cross the Atlantic or the Pacific, even with human help? Keeping in mind that it wouldn’t survive in the Far North. This looks like an even bigger puzzle than those Polynesian sweet potatoes.
I didn’t know about the fish.