Talk:Kumquat

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Contents 1 Eating 2 Etymology 3 Corfu 4 Vietnamese name 4.1 these names are not needed 5 Nagami color 6 Australian name 7 Link to Loquat 8 Erin and Kelsey

[edit] Eating

Don't eat it!

"The juicy center is often too sour to eat and is thrown away after the rind is consumed." was changed to "The juicy center is often too sour to eat and is thrown away before the rind is consumed."

The two sentences mean quite two different way of eating a kumquat. The original sentence meant that the rind of the fruit is nibbled off and the center is thrown away afterward. The new sentence means that the fruit is prepared in certain way before the rind is consumed. The former is how most people eat kumquat, not the latter.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Kowloonese (talk • contribs) 07:31, 14 August 2004

I find the phrases "Kumquats are frequently eaten whole" and "The juicy center is often too sour to eat; in this case it is thrown away" to be conflicting... if noone has any objections I'm going to change this section to suggest that these are simply two common methods of eating Kumquats. T He He 03:59, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Etymology

I'm suspicious about the current complicated explanation of the origin of this word, especially since I gather from dictionaries that 金 and 柑 are pronounced very similarly in Cantonese. My suspicion is that 柑橘 means "orange" in both Mandarin and Cantonese, 金橘 means "kumquat" in both Mandarin and Cantonese, and there has simply been a mistake in the article.

Thoughts from a Cantonese-speaker?

Pekinensis 00:34, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If I'm right, then I would like to simplify the text to read:

The name derives from the Cantonese pronunciation gam2 gwat1 (Chinese: 金橘; pinyin: jīnjú).

Pekinensis 21:20, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

金 and 柑 are pronounced exactly the same in Cantonese actually, and it should be gam1, not gam2. I have no idea what the exact situation surrounding the origin of this word is though, but most likely Cantonese speakers chose 柑 instead of 金 to represent it because they were homonyms in Cantonese (though not so in Mandarin) and the former character was already related to citrus fruits. --Umofomia 22:56, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

BTW, to refer to oranges, Cantonese uses 橙 caang2 instead. 柑橘 is not used to refer to oranges in Cantonese. --Umofomia 23:18, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Kumquat is a fruit, it is not made of metal. Cantonese never call orange 橘. Remember, there was the Cantonese name 柑橘 before there was the English name Kumquat. You don't make up or second guess the Cantonese word based on the English name. It is very likely that 金橘 is used around Chinese new year because everyone wishes for gold around that time of year. A search in Google showed 339 thousand pages on 柑橘, only 14 thousand pages on 金橘 besides, most of the top hits on the first page was not even about the fruit. Kowloonese 23:32, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Right, I wasn't implying that they made up 柑橘 after the English name. I was saying that in order to represent gam1 gwat1 they could have chosen either character and somehow one of them became the preferred way of writing it. This happens quite frequently with Cantonese words because written Cantonese never really had a standardization process. For instance, to represent the word "to give" bei2 both 畀 and 俾 can be commonly seen, even though 畀 is historically the correct one. --Umofomia 23:47, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Another example of this would be 大牌檔, which can commonly be seen written as 大排檔, even though only the former is the original correct word. When people are not sure how to write a particular word, they may use the wrong character and sometimes that mistake ends up being commonly used, especially since written Cantonese was never standardized. --Umofomia 00:20, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In response to:

Kumquat is a fruit, it is not made of metal.

金 is not only used to refer to things made of gold or metal. It can be used to refer to things that have a gold color, such as goldfish (金魚). --Umofomia 23:57, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please do the image versions of the two Google searches described above. BTW, thank you both for your rapid responses. — Pekinensis 00:06, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think the Google searches may be misleading because you end up getting a lot of results for 柑橘 that refer to the Mandarin meaning of "orange." --Umofomia 00:20, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Right, I didn't mean to imply that that was evidence for the Cantonese word, just for Chinese in some unspecified sense. That is, I wanted to emphasize that I'm not just making up these meanings up, but trying to figure out where they are used and where other words are used.

As a side point, the word I have always used for orange in Mandarin is 橙子. I was not aware that 柑橘 could mean orange until I did a Google image search for this article a few weeks ago. I was vaguely aware that I had seen the word somewhere, but didn't know what it meant. I also notice a lot of agricultural sites in the search engine results. Could it be more of a farmer's word than a consumer's word?

Anyway, thanks again for your interest in what I admit is kind of a trivial question. (But that's why we enjoy writing encyclopedia articles, right?)

Pekinensis 00:51, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

So what do you propose we do? My Mandarin skills are not as good so I don't really know the exact meaning of 柑橘 in Mandarin. Currently the Chinese wikipedia article on 柑橘 just says 橙是柑橘樹的果實，最常見的柑橘類水果, so it doesn't really explain the difference between 橙 and 柑橘. However, this article is still only half finished since most of it is still in English waiting to be translated into Chinese. --Umofomia 01:17, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't know. My feeling is that the case for saying that it comes from 金橘 is pretty strong. This is the Mandarin word, all the English dictionaries I Googled ([1], [2], [3]) claim that it comes from a Cantonese word meaning "golden orange" (although I don't know how if they are really independent from each other, or how careful they were likely to have been to tease out the complexities in the first place), and it's a plausible story to suppose that 金橘 is the historical word which has been widely reinterpreted in Cantonese as 柑橘.

Does it matter whether this happened before or after the borrowing?

Perhaps there is no correct answer to the question as posed. English borrowed the sound of the word from spoken Cantonese, not the Chinese character.

There is a lot of supposition and guessing, and I'm tired.

Pekinensis 01:54, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Okay in that case I agree with you, especially given the sources you have cited (whether they are completely accurate is not necessarily up to Wikipedia to decide, especially since no other sources to the contrary have surfaced). --Umofomia 02:07, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I decided to go ahead and make the following change:

The name derives from the Cantonese pronunciation gam1 gwat1 (given in Jyutping romanization; Chinese: 金橘; pinyin: jīnjú; literally "golden orange", though 柑橘, also pronounced gam1 gwat1, is now more commonly written by Cantonese speakers).

Do you think this is more amenable? --Umofomia 03:04, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Great! Thank you for your help. — Pekinensis 03:27, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I am okay with both names mentioned. I am from Hong Kong and I have known this fruit as 柑橘 all my life. The other name is new to me. I want to emphasize that this name is definitely transliterated from Cantonese according to the pronunciation, hence the Mandarin usage is not as important as the Cantonese usage when Etymology is concerned. Chinese from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland are different in many terminologies e.g. the Chinese word for hotels are "liquor store", "restaurant" and "guest house" respectively. The Chinese word for computer is "Electric Brain" or "Electronic Calculator" depending on where you use the term. Camcorder and Still photograph cameras have their meanings swapped when you declare them to Customs in different countries. Even American English and Britain English are different in terminologies, e.g. Biscuits and Muffins mean different things depending on who you talk too. My point is that when it is certain about the Cantonese origin, forget about the Mandarin meaning. Kowloonese 00:54, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Corfu

I'm surprised that Corfu is not linked with this article and vice versa. Having recently been there, I can say that Kumquats, its marmalade and especially the liquor, are one of symbols of the island – a lots of plantages and abundance of the liquor in every single shop. Google for "Corfu Kumquat" and you'll see what I mean. Duja 11:28, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Interesting! If that was your experience and you think it's worthy of mention, you should add the reference yourself. I'm sure there are a lot of places that specialize in kumquats or kumquat products but I've never heard of a place emphasizing kumquats over other citrus, as they're so small (because usually where kumquats grow, other citrus fruits grow also). Badagnani 20:10, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I will, although I thought someone more knowledgeable on the subject than a dumb tourist would do that :-). Duja 09:05, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I just checked and there are tons and tons of pages (in English and Greek) about Corfu kumquats, kumquat liqueur, kumquat jam, etc. The Greek spelling is κουμ κουάτ, κουμ-κουάτ, or κουμκουάτ. Badagnani 09:16, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vietnamese name

Thanks for correct Vietnamese at kumquat. Questions: 1) why are there two names in Viet; and 2) what does the "(quả)" signify in the first name? Thanks, Badagnani 04:33, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, from my understanding Vietnamese-speakers use the term "cẩm quất" as simply a corruption of the Cantonese name for the fruit. But actually, the characters are rendered as "kim quất" if transliterated from the characters "金橘" into Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation. The thing is, most Vietnames-speakers are either not actually aware of this etymology, or find the "proper" pronunciation stilted, preferring simply to call it by the Cantonese way. The "quẩ" is simply the Vietnamese rendering of "果". By the way, do you know the meaning of your surname in Italian? The "-gn" part is uniquely Italian or French, but the "-ni" at the end looks Arabic. User:Le Anh-Huy

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Badagnani" Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Le_Anh-Huy"

I've added text to reflect this etymological clarification. Could you please check it to see if it's correct? Badagnani 17:45, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] these names are not needed

I am an advocate for adding native text to encyclopedic articles. See my user-talk page for my views. However, I oppose to putting other irrelevant languages into an article. In this article, the title name "Kumquat" was based on the Cantonese name of the fruit. So it is informational to include the Cantonese text in the article. I don't see a need to name the fruit in all possible languages inside this article. These foreign names add no information for the English readers because the word "Kumquat" is not based on Vietnamese, nor Thai, hence they are not needed in the article. Besides, these foreign names are already linked to the non-English editions of Wikipedia. Removing them from the body of the article will not lose the association. For example, if you click on the Thai link on the left column, you can bring up the Thai article on this fruit. The Thai name belongs to the Thai article, not in this English article. In my opinion, only the English and Cantonese name need to stay, any other name does not belong here, not even the Mandarin name. The comment on how the Vietnamese name is derived belongs to the Vietnamese edition of wikipedia, not here. Another example to illustrate my point is in the Italian page on this fruit, the title of the Italian article is Fortunella, not Kumquat, so the Chinese text is irrelevant to the Italian readers because they don't name the fruit after the Cantonese name. However, since they named it after the Englishman "Robert Fortune", the English name become more relevant than the Chinese name to the Italian readers. I propose to remove the foreign names section and only keep the Cantonese name. Kowloonese 19:29, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

What should be done is a transwiki of the names to Wiktionary at wikt:kumquat, and then the section should be replaced with a Wiktionary tag: {{wiktionary|kumquat}}. — TheKMan^talk 20:02, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Keep names. These are names in nearby nations, and are valuable. More information is better than less. The names in Lithuanian, Inuit, etc. are unnecessary and can be found at Wiktionary, but the Asian alternate names are useful. Badagnani 21:56, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

The rule of thumb I use is whether the text is native to the topic or not. For example, the article mentions that Kumquat spread from China to Japan. If Japan is a major producer of Kumquat, then you may argue Kumquat is also native to Japan, hence the Japanese name may be useful info provided that you can make such a connection. The article didn't say anything about Vietnam and Thailand except for the name in these languages. I still propose to have these names removed unless the content of the article establish a connection. Kowloonese 22:56, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

If you can find a way to include the foreign-language names into the text, or provide some useful information about them, they should be included (e.g., provide the Japanese name in a section about Kumquat cultivation in Japan). However, simple name translations with no other information should be placed on Wiktionary. This isn't a big deal. — TheKMan^talk 02:26, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nagami color

A sentence in the introduction reads:

A Nagami kumquat is oval and has a yellow skin, while a Marumi kumquat is round with an orange-colored skin.

However, I just carefully ate around 20 Nagamis tonight (sour!), and all were orange to light-orange in color. I'll try rewriting the sentence, but feel free to revert me if it turns out I just had an exceptional batch or something. — TheKMan^talk 04:40, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Australian name

It seems that here in Australia, "cumquat" really means calamondin. They are sold as ornamental shrubs. I'll let an expert decide if this is worth working into the main article. 218.185.0.106 04:41, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Link to Loquat

Why does the Kumquat page include a link to the Loquat page (and vice-versa)? Admittedly, the names sound similar, and apparently both are derived from a Chinese word for orange. But the kumquats and loquats themselves are not related — the trees are not only in different families, they are in different orders! If the links are there merely for etymological interest, it would be helpful to state this alongside the links. Carol the Dabbler 16:19, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

It's a similar name and people get them confused, so cross-linking made sense. Badagnani 16:27, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

True, but couldn't the link line say something like "Unrelated plant with a historically-related name"? Or does somebody have a better phrase? Also, since limequats and orangequats really are related to kumquats, their links should come first. Carol the Dabbler 16:37, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I think your proposed phrase sounds very logical and agree that limequats and orangequats should come first. Badagnani 17:14, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. If nobody comes up with a better proposal, I'll change it later today. Ditto the Kumquat, Limequat, and Orangequat links on the Loquat page. Come to think of it, wouldn't just the Kumquat link be adequate there? Carol the Dabbler 17:59, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Erin and Kelsey

Who are these people, that they are related in some way to this fruit? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.245.36.179 (talk) 15:35, 5 November 2007 (UTC)