Re: What's the etymology of ketchup/catsup?

John Cowan <jcowan@...> wrote:


"It's from Minnan Chinese ke tsiap 'fish sauce', and was originally highly similar
to that Greek fermented fish sauce, the name of which I forget."

 Do you mean garum, the sauce made from fermented anchovies? Garum was one of
the cash crops of Carthage and Sardinia during Roman times - it is a
quintessentially Phoenician dish that was shipped in distinctive torpedo-shaped
amphorae. The Museum for which I work recently sent an expedition out to
collect samples from a ship sunk off the coast of Israel (in fact, the oldest
ship discovered in the deep sea) which was probably headed to Tyre with a load
of this fermented fish sauce. Now a great deal of these distinctive amphorae
have come to rest in our basement - along with an honest-to-goodness Phoenician
shipboard altar (probably the most interesting find on this ship).

 The recipe for garum survives in one form as the "worcestershire sauce" of
Britain, which was actually brought to Britain from India during the colonial
days. I don't know if the Phoenicians themselves brought it to India (and
possibly beyond) but they certainly did get around. An Egyptologist, Charles
Jones, believes that the Phoenicians gave their alphabet to the Malay (the
"Redjang Script") and that Phoenician currently lives on as the language of the
Redjang of Sumatra. He even has a very nice lexicon available to prove the
similarities between the two languages. Check it out at:

http://home.earthlink.net/~cjones3/doc.htm

 (I would add though that Jones' ideas are far from Orthodox, and I don't know
anyone who agrees with him). The equally fictitious Waponis from "Joe versus
the Volcano" were reputedly descended from similar origins. John Shanley wrote
that "Eighteen hundred years ago, a Roman galley with a crew of Jews and
Druids, got caught in a huge storm off Carthage. They were swept a thousand
miles off course, and ended up on the wrong side of the horn of Africa.
Thinking they were returning to Rome, they sailed deep into the South Pacific,
and finally ended by colonizing a lightly populated, Polynesian island which
they named Waponi Woo. Thus was born the Waponi culture - a mixture of
Polynesian, Celtic, Hebrew and Latin influences. The Waponis are known
throughout Polynesia as having a peculiar love of orange soda and no sense of
direction."

 Anyone familiar with the "Phoenician Text from Brazil" published by Cyrus H.
Gordon will recognize the story.

 The Waponis speak some sort of gibberish, but I think that it's unlikely that
he developed some sort of Polynesian/Celtic/Hebrew/Latin conlang for the film.
Pity - that would be a rather cool language, IMHO. Here's a sample of the
language from the film: "Who knew woe sue-weigh? Who knew woe? Drama said, said
sue-weigh? I na box, bum, pelica. Box."
      You can find the script for this film at

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/8299/

-Chollie



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