Craig wrote me via e-mail (I’ve added links):
Family of mine are going fruit picking today at a local orchard/golf course where they can pick honeyberries, a fruit we had never heard of. The plant Lonicera caerulea is a “non-climbing honeysuckle native throughout the cool temperate Northern Hemisphere regions of North America, Europe, and Asia.” (WP)
Its other name “haskap” comes from Ainu. Per Wiktionary, its etymology is “ハㇱ (has) + カ (ka) + オㇷ゚ (op), meaning ‘something that grows abundantly on branches'”. [Ainu is written in modified katakana.] While カ (ka) and オㇷ゚ (op) have entries in Wiktionary as “on” and “spear”, ハㇱ (has) has no entry, making it difficult to judge the rather florid “something that grows abundantly”.
John Batchelor’s 1905 “An Ainu-English-Japanese dictionary (including a grammar of the Ainu language)” has ハシ (hash) alone and in compounds meaning “scrubwood” or “shrubs” as well as ハツ (hat) meaning “grapes” [all on p. 138].
If any commenters know anything more about the language, I am curious how the etymology actually plays out. One thing is clear: too many websites selling the berry propound a cringeworthy exoticized false etymology of a “berry of long life and good vision” in Japanese!
An interesting question; I know almost nothing about Ainu and would like to hear more about it.
While I can’t say much about Ainu except their intriguing genetic origin, related both to Japan’s Jomon and to the native peoples of the adjacent mainland shores, I noticed another cool berry word in Russian wikipedia page on blue honesuckle: that its common habitat is шикшевник, apparently a tundra variety dominated by crowberries. I actually knew of the word (and plant) шикша albeit I doubt if most people speaking Russian ever heard of it…
Batchelor’s Ainu Economic Plants gives the same plant the term enumi-tanne, Japanese ヨノミ yonomi. No mention of haskap.
As to hat, it sounds like it refers to anything that grows in clusters (cf. English grapefruit), but I don’t know anything.
I actually knew of the word (and plant) шикша albeit I doubt if most people speaking Russian ever heard of it…
I certainly hadn’t, so thanks! Apparently it’s another name of the водяника.
The WP page gives the pronunciation as [hásꜜkàp], which seems odd.
It is possible to have a downstepped low tone, but it’s hardly a common thing. More to the point, Ainu is usually said to have pitch-accent (as a consequence of loss of contrastive vowel length in Hokkaido Ainu) but it’s a simple matter of whether it falls on the first syllable (which it does if it’s closed or originally had a long vowel) or the second. In Sakhalin Ainu (which preserves the vowel length) pitch is not contrastive.
Ah. This is carried over from the way Japanese pitch-accent is (sometimes) transcribed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent
Basically, within an intonation group, the last H in a series of H’s before a L is awarded a following downstep.
I imagine that the suprasegmentals of Hokkaido Ainu have indeed long been been conformed to those of Japanese. From an Africanist point of view, this looks like a weird transcription, though.
About the element -op, perhaps see my comment here. I looked into the topic of haskap a while ago, and checking my notes, I found a suggestion that it was Ainu hash ‘shrub, bush’ + ka ‘top, on top’ + -o- ‘be’ + -p (nominalizer). I have no idea where I got that or whether I cooked it up myself from Ainu grammars and dictionaries. Looking just now I found that a derivation like this is given on this page (枝の上に沢山あるもの ‘something that there is a lot of on branches’).
Short comment because I am on the road.
From an Africanist point of view, this looks like a weird transcription, though
Curiously, something not totally dissimilar happened in the prehistory of Kusaal.
The language started out with the West African bog-standard two-tone system with the occasional downstep for variety, but then original H tones became mid, unless followed by a L tone or by downstep.
The Edenic simplicity of this was then spoilt by the loss of many epenthetic and final vowels, and indeed of the occasional entire syllable, resulting in the current system of three contrastive tones and no (contrastive) downsteps.
Addendum: The Japanese wikipedia article on haskap has a full discussion of names for the fruit in Ainu and Japanese, in a separate section of the article onnames with extensive references:
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%8F%E3%82%B9%E3%82%AB%E3%83%83%E3%83%97
LH readers who do not read Japanese will be able run this through their preferred translator.
The following is listed in the bibliography to Suzuko Tamura’s The Ainu Language. If someone happens to have it on their shelf, it should be useful here:
LH readers who do not read Japanese will be able run this through their preferred translator.
GT provides this occasionally unintelligible but certainly evocative rendering:
I like “Flepp” quite a lot.
my go-to smartie says,
Name
Haskap derives from the Ainu word for the fruit of this plant, ハㇱカㇷ゚ (has-kap). Its original meaning is believed to come from ハㇱカオㇷ゚ (has-ka-o-p), which means “thing that grows in abundance on branches”.
It is thought that this term was adopted and established as a dialect word in the eastern part of the Iburi region by the Wajin (ethnic Japanese) who settled in Hokkaido.
The turning point for the use of the name “Haskap” is believed to have been in 1933 (Showa 8), when Takeo Kondo of Numanohata in present-day Tomakomai City began selling a sweet bean jelly (yōkan) infused with haskap under the product name “Haskap Yōkan” (see also later section).
Even after that, the name did not become widely established among local residents right away and was often referred to by other names (as mentioned earlier). However, over time, “Haskap” gradually became the standard name.
The subspecies name in its scientific classification, edulis, means “edible”. The variety name emphyllocalyx means “with leaf-like calyx.”
The standard Japanese name Kuromino Uguisukagura (“black-fruited bush honeysuckle”) was coined in contrast to a closely related plant that bears red fruit, Uguisukagura (Lonicera gracilipes var. glabra). The name literally means “black-fruited Uguisukagura.”
Alternate Names in Japan
In the Ainu language, the name Enumitanne is also used. This is a term for a slender type of haskap (a type of berry), and its original meaning comes from “e-numi-tanne,” which means “head・berry・long”. However, this name was reportedly not widely used among the Ainu.
This name was incorporated into the local dialect of Wajin (ethnic Japanese people) in the eastern part of the Iburi region as Enomidani, and later underwent further changes to become Yunomi and Yonomi.
In addition, in some areas of Atsuma Town and Abira Town, names like Yachigumi (谷地茱萸) or Yachinomi were used, which mean “goumi (Elaeagnus) of the marshland/wetlands.” These names were given as Japanese names and used by local residents before the term haskap became widespread.
There are also names like Furep, which comes from the Ainu word “hure-p” meaning “red・thing”, originally referring to lingonberries but used mistakenly. From this, the derived name Nezumi Furep (meaning “mouse furep”) also exists.
“Mouse flep” sounds … unappetising.
Please, that’s Mouse Frep. Mouse flep, whatever it may be, is surely quite different.
BTW this page spells out
has(枝条)、ka(の上)、o(に沢山なる)、p(もの)
https://www.hro.or.jp/agricultural/center/research-topics/kaju/index1.html
If someone happens to have it on their shelf, it should be useful here:
Chiri Mashiho. 1975–76. “Bunrui Ainugo Jiten”
The entry for Lonicera caerulea in this work begins on the bottom of page 26 here, and the form haskap is discussed at the top of page 27. The analysis as has (枝条) + ka (の上) + o (に沢山なる) + p (もの) appears to originate with Chiri.
Short comment because of the Eid holiday.
Eid Mubarak!
From me too. (And to all Muslim Hatters.)
I had presumed it wouldn’t be online. Sorry I doubted your powers, Xerîb.
Looking at Tamura’s comprehensive modern grammar, I then read -p as as a deverbal nominalizer, -o as a denominal verbalizer ‘to exist (there), to be situated’, ka ‘above’ (postposed), and then has 枝条 ‘branch, twig’. So, ‘that which is on top of branches/twigs’? What does that mean? Aren’t all fruit like that?
Williams’s 2017 Ainu Ethnobiology (here, p. 131) is long on botany but frustratingly brief on etymology: “Lonicera caerulea is called enumitanne or haskap in Ainu (Chiri 1953). The latter name refers to its swamp habitat.” What?
Likewise, for another species, Williams writes “Lonicera alpigena is known as ayna-ni (ayna-ne-ni), or ‘the tree that becomes the linkage between the tip and the shaft of the spear or arrow’.” That’s really no good.
It’s amazing how many people can’t resist the impulse to poeticize their translations from “exotic” languages.
So, ‘that which is on top of branches/twigs’? What does that mean? Aren’t all fruit like that?
One possibility is that the generic name for “berry” was attached to the economically most important berry, like corn meaning “maize” in North American English, but “wheat” in some varieties of British English.
Or pomme ‘apple’ < ‘fruit’.
I’ll look again at that Ethnobiology book, to see what other fruit there are called.
Aren’t all fruit like that?
Not nearly. In most brushy species, berries tend to form in large clusters and to be located near the tips of the branches.
Honeysuckle is quite distinct in that berries are individually attached to the branches along their full length.
So the Ainu observation is quite precise. In botany, there are special Latin terms for the extreme fruit location patterns where the berries form away from the branch tips – ramiflory (flowers at previous year’s woody twigs rather on the newly grown ones) and cauliflory (flowers on old, matured branches and trunks).
Aha, now I know the word for the way redbuds bloom. (It’s also good steamed with a little lemon or nutmeg.)
Thanks, Dmitry! That completes the puzzle — almost. Tamura gives examples with ka meaning literally ‘on top’. I suppose that it’s used for describing the relation of something that’s hanging, like English on, but I haven’t seen it explicitly stated. Also, if Chiri says haskap < haskaop I’ll take his word for it, but again I’d like to see that vowel cluster reduction (or omission of the morpheme) explained explicitly. But those are little things.
also good steamed with a little lemon
i imagine redbud flowers would be, too! i’ve always just eaten them raw, but i’ll try to remember to give it a shot next year. (i think redbuds are one of the tastiest tree flowers; they’re certainly less off-putting for new flower-eaters than magnolias, whose fragrance can be startling)
The only leguminous flower I’ve eaten is that of New Mexico Locust, Robinia neomexicana, which is more of a shrub than a tree. The flowers taste strangely like peas.