Spinach: Mongolian rhapsody
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[This is a guest post from Christopher Atwood]
Building on observations of Andras Rona-Tas (Tibeto-Mongolica, pp. 213-14), one can observe a basic division in Mongolian words for cultivated plants. They divide into two types: 1) words for grains and grain cultivation; and 2) words for fruits and vegetables.
Words in the first category (tariya "grain" buudai "wheat," arbai "barley," shish "sorghum," am "millet," budaa "grain," anjisu "plow" mill "teerem" etc) are consistent throughout the Mongolic family, and have great time depth — most of them are not obviously loan words from any other language (some have Turkic cognates, but at a considerable time depth).
The other have little time depth, are inconsistent across the Mongolic family, and in any given Mongolic language or dialect are usually borrowed from the neighboring non-Mongolic farming people. In modern languages there's a push to adopt more Mongolian sounding terms (usually either Turkic in origin or else calque translations), but they often fail. For example, in Ulaanbaatar, alim "apple" (Turkic origin) is usually yaawlag (Russo-Mongolian from yábloko, and örgöst xemx ("spiny melon"=cucumber) is usually something like oguurcai (from Russian ogúrec). On the other hand in Inner Mongolia, what is baicaa and sheegua in Ulaanbaatar is usually cagaan nogoo (cabbage, calqued from Chinese, literally "white greens"), or tarwas (watermelon, from Uyghur) in Inner Mongolia.
One lovely exception to this is "potato," which in most Mongolian dialects I know is tömös, which is originally the word for "lily bulb," repurposed with the introduction of potato. The Buryats, however, adopted xartaabxa, from Russian kartófel'.
The obvious socio-linguistic root of this distinction is that grain-farming has been a continuous tradition among Mongolic-speakers, with all of them doing some grain farming, in continuous tradition from the distant past. Growing fruits and vegetables, however, has been something adopted independently from various sources, and often dropped and then picked up again, under different influences.
So, to your question "spinach" in Mongolian:
I have never actually knowingly purchased or eaten spinach in Mongolia, and I wasn't aware of the word, so I looked it up in Mongolian. I get two versions: buucai and örgöst nogoo "spiny greens". No prizes for guessing either 1) where buucai came from, or 2) which one is actually used more in the groceries if you want to buy it (I wouldn't be surprised if some derivation of špinat is also used, although it would have to be pretty massively altered to fit Mongolian phonotactics). What is not so clear is whether the reference to "spiny" is a calque translation from some other language, or just an obvious reference to the observable features of the plant, as it is with cucumbers. (When my wife started active gardening, I was surprised to see how spiny real fresh cucumbers actually are — those sold in stores rub off all the spines.) I'd guess the latter.
Victor Mair said,
July 10, 2025 @ 7:57 pm
From Greg Pringle:
I've always found the names of vegetables confusing. There is a vegetable that the Mongolians call юуцай yuutsai, which is called 小白菜 xiǎobáicài in Chinese (there actually appears to be a variety of names for this vegetable in Chinese, but 油菜 yóucài doesn't seem to be among them — it's used for a different vegetable in Chinese). In English the юуцай is known as bak choy, in Japanese as チンゲンサイ chingensai. (Spinach is also confusing for me because when I was growing up in Australia the word 'spinach' was used for the vegetable elsewhere known as 'silverbeet'. So we were actually eating the wrong vegetable if we wanted to be like Popeye.)
The word for 'tomato' is a good one. It's usually known as помидор pomidor in Mongolia, obviously from Russian, ultimately from Italian. The officially preferred name, which no one uses, is улаан лооль ulaan lool' or 'red lool', the word "lool'" apparently being an old loanword from Chinese. In China it's called төвд хаш tövd hash, an obvious calque on Chinese 番茄 fānqié, which literally means something like 'western region eggplant'.
I don't know I've ever heard the word yawlak in Mongolia. The authorities seem to have been successful in resuscitating алим alim. Unfortunately the apple is known in China as almarad — you used to see shops in Inner Mongolia that sold 'Almarad computers'. Alim is used for the pear in China.
Greg Pringle said,
July 10, 2025 @ 8:16 pm
To correct my comment above, 油菜 yóucài does actually appear to be used for the bak choy in China, so юуцай is correct. The term is a direct borrowing from Chinese.
David Dettmann said,
July 11, 2025 @ 9:47 am
I have been dabbling in the world of Eurasian "wild spinaches" and have found a few alternate words which may be of interest. In Mahmud al-Kashari's Divan, he lists something called bustuli with an Arabic gloss of sarmaq (سَرْمَق), which refers to wild spinaches in the amaranth family: the Chenopodium genus, including "white goosefoot", or "lambs quarters", or Artiplex genus vegetables (Dankoff simply translates the term to "Mountain spinach").
Greg Pringle mentions the Mongolian word for tomato as ulaan lool' улаан лооль ("red lool'"). There is actually a connection to wild spinach here too, as the "regular" lool' is a word used for wild spinach in Mongolian. I'm guessing that wild spinach was there first and the newly arrived tomato, with similar looking leaves, was adapted using a local name. There is some overlap into Uyghur (at least in Turpan dialect) as well. There "wild spinach" is called loyla لويلا
@Greg Pringle: you suggest lool' might come from Chinese-what makes you think that?
I also found a few references to alternate names. In Uzbek there is something called ismaloq, and in Kazakh there is something called samaldyk самалдық. In my dictionaries both were without scientific names, just listed as "a type of spinach".
David Dettmann said,
July 11, 2025 @ 1:48 pm
I'm supposing that people in the area of present day Mongolia used to eat a LOT more lily bulbs than they do now, and that familiarity influenced the adaptation of "tömös" (төмс) for potato as that new food item caught on. I know that people do still eat these in Mongolia, but I haven't yet seen this featured or mentioned in contemporary Mongolian cookbooks. Lily bulb consumption is frequently mentioned west and north of Mongolia by anthropologists, and it is even featured in Soviet-era Buryat cookbooks, with recipes. For those interested, the Buryat name for these bulbs is тибһэн–quite different from tömös.
Greg Pringle said,
July 11, 2025 @ 7:56 pm
My source for лооль coming from Chinese:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8C#Mongolian
Wiktionary is probably not a completely reliable source, and besides, even at the article it's only mentioned as speculation, so my comment actually had a pretty shaky basis.
Greg Pringle said,
July 11, 2025 @ 8:23 pm
You mention the Arabic term 'sarmaq' for a kind of wild spinach. In Mongolian the term сармаг apparently refers to the манжин 'turnip' (which is apparently from Chinese 蔓菁). Also, Mongolian has two terms for garlic: сармис and саримсаг (the latter apparently related to Turkish 'sarymsak'). I'm rather curious as to whether there are connections among these terms. (I am not versed in etymologies, so these are purely speculations on my part.)
Greg Pringle said,
July 11, 2025 @ 8:48 pm
As a final comment, you give Buryat тибһэн for "potato". Since һ is equivalent to с (i.e., /s/) in Khalkha, the Buryat term can be interpreted as тибсэн (tibsen) at an earlier stage. Moreover, there is a latent н (i.e. /n/) in Khalkha төмс, as seen in the genitive form төмсний (tömsnii). That would give Buryat "tibsen" vs Khalkha "tömsön".
Note also the derivation of Khalkha "tömör" 'iron' from "temür". Again, I am not an etymologist, but I would hazard a guess that the Buryat and Khalkha terms are actually related.
Greg Pringle said,
July 11, 2025 @ 8:57 pm
Correction, you gave тибһэн as meaning 'lily bulb'. At any rate, if тибһэн and төмс are related, this only backs up your speculation that the Mongolian word for 'potato' might originally have been used for the lily bulb.
Greg Pringle said,
July 11, 2025 @ 9:26 pm
Another correction: It was Chris Atwood who pointed out that "One lovely exception to this is "potato," which in most Mongolian dialects I know is tömös, which is originally the word for "lily bulb," repurposed with the introduction of potato." I really have to stay behind the eight ball!
Jonathan Smith said,
July 12, 2025 @ 12:22 am
Yikes, we see always in such discussions how "Chinese" lexicography is so far behind literally everything… "灰綠藜" "蔓菁" "油麥菜" etc. etc., there is really no telling (to me) if these things are historically "Chinese" or if that even means anything…
David Dettmann said,
July 12, 2025 @ 6:54 am
@Greg Pringle: thanks for the illustration about the Buryat h. I should know better than to assume modified Cyrillic letters would have a similar function between languages! I had assumed it was used like in Kazakh
David Marjanović said,
July 12, 2025 @ 1:53 pm
In Kazakh, too, it is supposed to stand for [h] – but in that language, very much unlike Buryat, it only occurs in a few Arabic loans, and from what little I've read most people can't pronounce it.