Categories
Food Necessities

Ketchup

The etymology of ketchup actually has several competing theories, namely: the Chinese theory, the “eggplant sauce” theory, the Malay theory, and the European-Arabic theory. The Chinese theory seems pretty strong, we must admit…

In the Chinese theory, it stems from either “kôe-chiap” or “kê-chiap”, both from the Amoy dialect, where it means “the brine of pickled fish or shellfish.”

 

 

from http://masterblog.front.lv/category/fun/

As for the “eggplant sauce” theory, “ketchup” derives from a Chinese word composed of two characters (茄汁), which means “eggplant sauce”. The first character (), meaning “eggplant”, is also the root for the word “tomato” and the second character () means “juice” or “sauce.”

The Malay theory states that the English word originates from the Malay word kicap (or, kecapketjap), which translates to “fish sauce” – which is borrowed from the Chinese, anyway…

European-Arabic Theory:  E.N. Anderson, an American anthropologist, claimed that ketchup comes from the French escaveche, meaning “food in sauce”  (imagine… French ketchup!) while culinary historian Karen Hess traced it back to Arabic iskebey, or “pickling with vinegar”.

 

 

Blue Label Ketchup 1898, from wiki article

 

 

 

Categories
Life Maritime

Shanghai

In the 1800s, long sea voyages were very difficult and dangerous, so people were understandably hesitant to become sailors. But sea captains and shipping companies still needed crews to sail their ships, so they gathered sailors any way they could — even if that meant resorting to kidnapping.

The word “shanghai” comes from the name of the Chinese city of Shanghai. People started to use the city’s name for that unscrupulous way of obtaining sailors because the East was often a destination of ships that had kidnapped men for their crew.