Vegetables constitute a major part of our diet. A curry without vegetables is not at all possible and is meaningless. In the primitive age, when man was staying in the jungle, fruits and animal meat were his main food. But in due course when man settled at a particular place by making a group, he started cultivating the fruits and vegetables, which are harmless, tasty and eatable. Hence, so many types of vegetables came. Numerous vegetables are thus of very ancient origin and it is not possible to trace the origin of their names. Carrot, beet, cucumber, pea fall in this class. But it is very interesting to know how some of the vegetables were named.
There are some vegetables whose names are not so old and have come from various words of different languages of the world. Most of the vegetables are named according to their qualities. Potato-the king of vegetables is named after a Haitian word patata. Haiti is an island country situated between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean. Tomato, which is a fruit but generally used as a vegetable has come from the Mexican word tomatl. Mexico is a country in the middle of North and South America. Radish owes its origin to the French word radis, a name modified from a word meaning wart. Cabbage gets its name from the French word caboche, which means head. Cauliflower has also come from another French term cole florie means flowering cabbage. Pumpkin too gets its origin from a French word, which is derived from a Greek word meaning ‘cooked by the sun’. Corn goes back to a Saxon word of the same spelling which means ‘worn down particle’. Turnip has come from a French word which means round root. Mushroom also owes its origin to France as it was first cultivated in the beds of mousse or moss. Lettuce evolved from a Latin word lactua which means milk-giving cow.