Rich roots of the word “Olive”

It is well known that the Summer is the season when media publish interesting but ess mediatic news. That is the case of today’s article. We found several week ago something we wanted to share and we have kept it until today.

On March 12, the Spanish newspaper “El Pais” released an outstanding article from the French linguist and etymologist Louis-Jean Calvet entitled “¿Necesitamos aprender quechua, si ya hablamos español?” (“Do we need to learn Quechua, if we speak Spanish?”).

Calvet’s text is a praise of the multilingualism and a call to action to public administrations in order to defend and respect such a cultural richness and diversity. For obvious reasons, we were deeply interested in a paragraph explaining the etymological origin of the word “olive”.

Our translation of the text goes:

“(…) the oil (in Spanish: “aceite”) obtained from the olive comes from Greek, Latin and Arabic roots. The Latin “olea” (olive) and “oleum” (“oil”) is kept in Italian (“olio” and “oliva”) and in French (“huile” and “olive”), but in Spanish the oil was formed from Arabic root with the words “zit” (giving birth to “aceite”) and “zitoun” (giving birth to “aceituna”, a popular synonymous for “olive”) (…). In the Mediterranean, the only oil known was made from olives. These words spread to other countries where olive trees are not common, but whose languages borrowed the word from Romanic languages. In English: oil and olive; in German: “öl” and “olive”. Therefore, the English expression “olive oil” is a tautology”.

Calvet uses this example to provide with evidence that peoples and cultures are continuously moving and mixing, their languages contact and share words and expressions. Spanish, Catalan, French, and even English have borrowed many words from different linguistic origins from Romanic, Arabic and other languages. Therefore, this little example shows that language is going far beyond any Brexit and other anti-immigration policies. It is not useful to try to segregate cultures and block migrations. In the long run it does not work.

We are very happy that “our olive” is also a symbol of such a linguistic and cultural richness!

Carpe Diem

Alfredo & Pierre Ralda