What’s in a name? Understanding Ananas
Did you know? Ananas means the same thing in the majority of languages: pineapple. English is in the minority when it comes to naming it. The pineapple though, is more than just a tropical spiky fruit with a head of leaves that has a sweet refreshing citrusy center, it has a surprisingly rich history as a symbol for community and connection.
Historically, Ananas comes from the term ‘nanas’, meaning ‘excellent fruit’ in a South-American dialect, first recorded by André Thevet in 1555. About 50 years earlier to this finding, it was said that the famous Christopher Columbus brought it to Europe, which led to its other popular name due to its resemblance to a pine cone. One name emphasizes its thorny and spiky exterior, and the other the sweet deliciousness inside. We normally don’t choose sides, but this is an exception.
It’s more than just a fruit though, it’s a symbol. Ananas quickly became iconic as a symbol of welcome and hospitality in the 16th century. At this period of time ananas had become considered great gifts and exotic commodities. Just like sugar, they once were seen as tropical, rare, and expensive, reserved for the rich and the brave sailors and explorers who traveled to South America. Nowadays, it’s in your local supermarket. What hasn’t disappeared though, is its symbolic nature.
Whenever a pineapple was presented it elicited a warm friendly environment that was inclusive of all members of the party. It became a custom to present pineapples as gifts to offer peaceful unions of enjoyment together, people would even eat the fruit together. To this day, pineapples still hold the same symbolic effect and are often given at weddings, in fruit baskets to neighbors, and most widely seen to decorate doors, gates, homes, and other various places where people get together.
We chose the name Ananas for our Foundation and platform because we wanted to brand a place people felt welcome and included in from the start. We want people to feel like there is always going to be a place they can turn to for information. We want to be able to build a trusted source that answers questions the world has been accurately trying to answer on the world wide web.
One might also say it simply was one of the few meaningful words not trademarked, but we leave the choice, of which story you want to believe, to you.
The Ananas Foundation is a UK registered charity that is focusing on building stronger communities for the future through the exploration and understanding of the world’s ideologies. Our goal is to help harmonize differences and we’re doing this by mapping the beliefs that underlie ideologies, and providing a rich context to place these in, to empower society to gain a knowledge that helps us better understand each other.
We believe that if we can come together and engage with the subjective information in our lives in a positive way, we can address one of the biggest information issues known today. Information without context, isn’t knowledge, and particularly makes us vulnerable to bias around us. It sounds like a small distinction, but just like the word Ananas, context is powerful in fostering connection and trivializing the ever so minor differences between people and cultures.
The Ananas Foundation is leveraging the latest technology to bring the public contextual resources that outline as many subjective matters as possible, covering topics of faith, culture, politics, philosophy, art, and more. We live in an advanced world with great people and great resources, why not join as one force for a collation of information that can help us understand each other’s beliefs and ideologies better? We may even learn about ourselves along the way ;)
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