Muchas Gracias

Geographically speaking, Spain is about 7900 kilometres away from India. But culturally speaking, they’re much, much closer as we owe nearly everything we do to the Spanish. Trust me, I am not exaggerating.

The guitar we strum; the cigarette we smoke; the hot chocolate we drink; the radio we tune into; the wheelchair your granddad uses; the glass mirror you peer into; the foosball you play; the calculator you punch into; the lollipop your kid craves for; the eye glasses you so depend upon; the humble mop your maid uses; the stapler your office cannot do without; the pocket knife you need during travels; even the first telescope, the first space suit and the first planetarium were all invented by Spaniards.

And I am just getting started. Kid you not. If we paid a dollar for everything we owe Spain, they’d probably be the richest country in the world. Allow me to elaborate.

Tungsten, the metal used in mobile phones, circuit boards, rock drills, planes, cars and trains, was discovered by the Elhuyar brothers in 1783. Platinum, the precious metal behind jewellery, catalytic converters, pacemakers and magnets, is yet again a contribution of Spanish ingenuity.

Linguistically speaking, the Hispanic species has made the English language richer by at least 150 words. Alligator (‘the lizard’), Mosquito (‘little fly’), Breeze (‘cold northeast wind’), Tornado (‘thunderstorm’), Vigilante (‘watchman’), Bonanza (‘prosperity’), Cafeteria (‘coffee store’), Peon (‘labourer’), Savvy (‘wise’), Vanilla (‘little pod’) and Zorro (‘fox’) are a few surprising loanwords you’ll never attribute to Spain.

Three of the foodie universe favourites – Tacos, Nachos, and Burritos – have their roots to people or things from the land of the Tomatino festival. ‘Nachos’ is named after Ignacio Anaya, a Mexican restaurateur who cut tortillas into triangles, fried and served them with shredded cheese and jalapeno peppers when he couldn’t locate his cook to serve some American military officers. ‘Tacos’ is derived from an old custom of miners to wrap paper around gunpowder to use as explosive charges. If you really think the Mexican dish involves the same process of rolling a tortilla around a filling. ‘Burrito’ literally means ‘little donkey’ in Spanish. The cylindrical shape of the dish probably reminded people of the packs that donkeys carried in the olden days.

Tequila, Sherry and Mojito are some more spirited Spanish gifts to die for. Given this armada of delights, it would be safe to conclude with a pithy aphorism: No Spain, No Gain.

The Almirah of Etymologies

Okay, quiz time.

Which European empire lasted the longest in India?

I expect quite a few of you to get this wrong. No, it’s not the Brits. Even accounting for the East India Company, they ruled us from 1612 to 1947. That’s like 335 years.

In contrast, the French sphere of influence lasted for 288 years. While the Dutch presence was for 220 years. The guys who beat them, fair and square, were the Portuguese. They lorded over Goa for nearly 450 years!

With such a long footprint, the Portuguese naturally influenced our culture in ways we can’t even fathom. For starters, they gave us the potato, tomato, pineapple, guava, papaya, cashew, capsicum, chilli, tapioca and the cheeku fruit. May be I should add peanuts, corn, okra, litchi, vindaloo, kalkals and tobacco too.

A bouquet of words in our native lexicon owe their origins to Vasco da Gama land. The Tamil word for key is nearly the same as the Portuguese ‘Chave’. Dravidian purists would be aghast to know that ‘jannal’ (window), ‘rosa’ (rose), ‘koppai’ (cup), ‘mesai’ (table), ‘pena’ (pen), ‘pippa’ (barrel), mestri (mason) and ‘verandah’ (porch), have a mystic Lisbon connect.

Hindi has been a liberal borrower as well. ‘Balti’ (bucket), ‘santra’ (orange), ‘ayah’ (nanny), ‘kamra’ (room), ‘pav’ (bread), ‘chai’ (tea), ‘biskut’ (biscuit), ‘sabun’ (soap), ‘padri’ (priest), ‘almari’ (almirah), ‘kameez’ (clothing), ‘kaju’ (cashew), ‘batata’ (potato), and ‘madira’ (wine) derive their roots from words minted in Portugal. Even colloquialisms such as ‘istri’, ‘toliya’ and ‘iskuul’ come from Portuguese words ‘esterar’ (to press), ‘toalha’ (towel) and ‘escola’ (school).

Some very familiar angrezi shabd have a similar linguistic connection. Labrador, for example, is named so because it was first bred in the Labrador Peninsula in Canada. Incidentally, the area was discovered by the Portuguese explorer Joao Fernandes Lavrador.

Emu, the largest bird native to Australia and a synonym for Ponzi schemes in Tamil Nadu, is etymologically a Portuguese word that means ‘ostrich’.

So many more Indianisms like palanquin, mosquito, indigo, commando, coconut, caste, buffalo, banyan, breeze, cobra, jackfruit, pomfret, tank and teak, wouldn’t be around, had a 15th century bearded sailor not uttered, ‘Eastward Ho!’.

A Symphony of Names

The other day I truly, madly, deeply wanted to find out why the guitar was called the ‘guitar’. Uncle Wikipedia gave me a rather unsatisfactory explanation that it may have originated from the Greek ‘Kithara’. A music buff named Paul Guy made me wonder if Sanskrit may have played a role here.

Because the Ektara is a one-stringed instrument. The Dotara has two strings. Tritara (or as the Persians say ‘Setar’) has three strings. By that logic, Chauthara must have been the one with 4-strings. The Italians might have interpreted it as Chittara. The Arabians may have made it Qithara and in Spanish it could have become Quittara - from where we get the original renaissance period 4-stringed Guitar!

Sanskrit also gave us Ghatam (meaning ‘pot’), Mridangam (‘clay body’ – those days it was made of hardened clay) and the Bansuri (‘bamboo melody’). Sanskrit’s country cousin Prakrit is said to have birthed Pakhawaj (‘side instrument’).

Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man owes the Arabs his name. They say Tambourine is derived from Tambur (‘drum’). Even Amir Khusro’s invention the Tabla (‘drum’) is Arabic in conception.

The violin family has an interesting story. The Roman goddess of joy is Vitula. Now Vitulare in Latin also means ‘to sing or to rejoice’. Vitula evolved into Fiddle (I sense a German angle as they have a habit of pronouncing ‘V’ as ‘F’) and it also spawned the Old French word ‘vielle’ which later became Viola. In the initial days, ‘Violone’ meant the big Viola, ‘Violine’ the smaller version and ‘Violonecello’ the intermediate size. With passage of time Vilonecello became ‘cello then the apostrophe was dropped. Today, there are just 3 sizes - Violin, Viola and Cello.

Let’s change our tune to the exotic. Morsing is from the Rajasthani Morchang. My surmise is that the instrument shape resembled a peacock’s mouth. That explains the Mor. ‘Chang’ could be onomatopoeic. Didgeridoo is also said to be mimicking the sound made by the instrument. Oboe is a French loan word from ‘haut buoy’ or ‘loud wood’. Ukelele is Hawaiian for ‘the gift that came from here’. And Trombone is Italian for ‘large trumpet’. With that we end our name orchestra.

Know your onions.

In an era when Apple is viewed as a computer, Ginger as a hotel, Onion as a satirical newspaper and Broccoli as a film maker, you do tend to forget your beets, shoots and leaves. In such moments, it’s good to pause and reflect on the salad days of vegetables.

Onions (possibly the oldest recorded vegetable) were treated like gods in Ancient Egypt. Some say they were worshipped because they provided all the energy to the slaves who built the pyramids. The Greeks used onions as a primitive form of steroids for preparing their athletes for the Olympics. In the middle ages, doctors everywhere were prescribing it for relieving coughs, curing headaches, healing snake bites, and solving infertility! The profound coexistence of many layers in one bulbous blob inspired some Romans to coin a Latin word unionem (meaning ‘the one’) which later morphed into the humble Onion.

Likewise, potatoes were the most precious things for the Incas. They fought for it, prayed with it and even buried their dead with it. In 1565, when explorer Gonzalo Jiminez de Quesada didn’t find gold, he took the potato in lieu, as he found it as treasure-worthy. If not for Sir Francis Drake’s generous act of planting the wonder tuber in Ireland, the world would never have got to taste the French Fries, the aaloo paratha, the bonda and the samosa. Curiously, the name potato (derived from the Spanish ‘batata’) was originally invented for the sweet potato!

The linguistic origins of some other vegetables are as intriguing. The cabbage draws its roots from the French word ‘caboche’ (meaning head). I suspect a Sanskrit origin as ‘kapishaka’ has identical connotations.

Carrot comes from the Greek ‘karaton’, thanks to its horn-shape. Ginger from Greek ‘gingibris’ which in turn is inspired from the Tamil ‘Inji ver’. Gooseberry from German ‘krausebeere’ or ‘crispy, curly’. Yam from the West African 'nyami' (‘to eat’). Radish from Latin for ‘root’. The big fat pumpkin from the Greek word for ‘cooked by the sun’. And zucchini from Italian for ‘little pumpkin’.

So the next time you say grace before your meal, thank the green gods from all continents.

How Countries Got Their Names.

To most of us ignoramuses, Turkey is a textured bath towel. Tonga is a vintage horse carriage. Monaco is a salt-kissed biscuit. Congo is a misspelled African drum. Qatar is a BSNL lady saying ‘you’re on hold’. And Panama is a nostalgic whiff of strong tobacco.

Being clueless folks who cannot pinpoint West Indies or West Mambalam on a map, I thought it might help, if we took a crash course to improve our GQ (Geographic Quotient). Hence the excursion into country names.

Before we suit up for the deep dive, let’s first do a quick head count of the nations. According to reliable sources, at the moment, there are 196 sovereign states in our little world. When we put them under the microscope, you’ll uncover 5 types of nomenclature.

Type 1 is what I call the ‘Tribal Nation’. Simply put, they are nations that have been named after tribes of yore. Germany (from ‘Garim’ - a noisy Celtic tribe), France (from the spear throwing ‘Franks’), England (land of ‘Angles’), Iran (‘Aryans’), Afghanistan (‘Avaghanis’ or horseriders) and Kyrgyzstan (land of ‘forty tribes’) are celebrated case studies in this genre.

Type 2 is the ‘Dynasty Nation’. These are countries christened after kings and dynasties. China (a nod to the Qin dynasty), Korea (‘Goryeo’ lineage), Saudi Arabia (‘Saud’ family), Egypt (Home of the ‘Ptah’), Philippines (a tribute to ‘Prince Philip’ of Austria) and Mozambique (after Sheikh ‘Mussa Ben Mbiki’) are some eloquent illustrations.

Type 3 is the ‘Topographic Nation’. Here, some prominent topographic feature might have triggered the moniker. Examples include Malaysia (Tamil & Latin for ‘Hilltown’), Croatia (derived from the Indo-Iranian ‘Hrvati’ or River Saraswati), Bahamas (‘Shallow Sea’), Netherlands (‘Lowlands’) and Ukraine (‘Borderlands’).

Type 4 is the ‘Evocative Nation’. Countries of this kind sport meaning-rich names like Uzbekistan (Home of the Free), Burkina Faso (Land of Honest Men), Japan (Land of the Rising Sun), Costa Rica (Rich Coast) and Liberia (Liberty).

Type 5 is the ‘Trivial Nation’. Or a country with a fun name story. Italy (from ‘Vitulis’ or sons of bull god), Barbados (‘bearded ones’) and Spain (land of rabbits) typify this. Don’t you wish we had more such quirky names?