Ever wonder how other languages write "fig" or "ficus carica", etc? This is useful when researching or trying to identify a variety. Most of these tramsaltions are available at the Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN). Some of the translations do not yield fig-related results. I have removed those. Doing a search for "teen" (Arabic) may end up getting you in trouble ;-) . And some of the terms (also removed) will only take you to adult content. Just copy and paste onto your favorite search engine. Hope it's helpful!

Wow!  How do you do this?  You da man, Ruben!!

Copied and pasted your post into word for future reference.  I have no faith on websites retaining important posts to me, so... my computer is backed up daily by Norton Online Backup, and I'm comfy with that!  Can't tell you how many times I needed something, and site down!!

Suzi

Tin is Indonesian and I believe teen is Lebanese

Teen = Arabic
Tehne = in Chaldean, but the E at the end is soft sort of. Hard to translate in writing.

hey i just saw this..

무화과 ,
무화과나무

the first one is the fig itself, and the secod one is fig tree. i think the the actual name is from chinese. the fig is called "fruit without flower".

Pete - you are exactly right. In Chinese, fig is called 无花果. The first character, 无, means no. The middle character, 花, means flower. The last character, 果, means fruit. So a fig is a fruit with no flower.

In Pashto (Pushto) a fig is called " Inzar ".

Smokva=Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian-Slovenian
Cмокиня=Bulgarian
Füge=Hungarian
Fík=Czech
Smochin=Romanian

Its vata in sanskrit, te'enah in Hebrew, but (of course) Ficus in latin.  The Ficus part explains why all the romance languages are similar - fig, figo, fico, higo etc...  And the te'enah makes sense with teen and tehne.  But what happened to vata?

Sanskrit is one of the oldest indo-european languages, and I usually expect some connection.  Like pitr in sanskrit, is pater in latin, and padre, and pere, and pater, and fadir and faedir and in the language we are using father.

But VATA seems to have totally died out with no evolution.  Anyone know any connections?  Or know of a language where VATA is close to the word for FIG?  What would be the oldest language that refers to figs in literary sources?

Sorry, I'm a history teacher...and a nerd.

Sorry for extending off-topic thing.
Dave
It is confusing. Some parents from india when addressing their son say "pitr' meaning 'son'. But you say "pitr in sanskrit, is pater in latin, and padre, and pere, and pater, and fadir and faedir and in the language we are using father" which gets turned around 180 degree, from son to father. Is that what you meant ?

Ottawan - I didn't know that at all, but it is interesting.  I have seen 'pitr' used as something like "important ancestor" but never like son - not to say you aren't right, I'm sure you are... my only knowledge is in historical contexts, not in modern usages.  Is it in Hindi or Bengali?  Actually there are more languages than that in India aren't there.

I find etymology very interesting.  I see students from different backgrounds that really like to connect to the phrases/names/titles in historical time periods because they already know or see some familiarity with words their parents or grandparents use regularly in the home.  I remember when a young girl with Greek parents realized that her name "Sophia" means wisdom - as in philosophy (lit. love of wisdom).  She was pretty pleased that her name sort of meant "really smart"...haha.

The history of languages really places us in a historical context, because we are using words given to us by generations past.  Whether its pitr, father, essfeige or ficus we are all put into historical continuity by the language we have been given, often times tracing back thousands of years.

Sorry for the thread hijack, but I found go4broek's post really interesting....I'll stop now....lol.