KIWI
The Bird, Fruit and People
Kiwi — that word alone can bring up a lot of confusion. Why? Well, it not only describes one, not two, but three things.
And all of them have exactly one thing in common: They can be found in New Zealand.
So let’s start with the one that gave its name to all the others: The Kiwi Bird.
The name of this little, nocturnal bird stems from the Maori. It is native to New Zealand and roughly the size of a domestic chicken. Sadly enough, nowadays the species of the kiwi bird is endangered.
Time after time, this small bird became the national symbol of New Zealand. There, it will certainly live on forever.
The kiwi as a national symbol brings us to our next Kiwi: The New Zealander himself.
Everyone is a Kiwi there. Whether you’re Maori or not.
It started out with the military being nicknamed Kiwis, and later in 1918 the Oxford English Dictionary equated “Kiwi” to “New Zealander” for the first time.
Obviously, this name has stuck.
But there are even more things called kiwi!
We cannot forget the thing that most of us have in mind when we hear the word. Or at least what we thought of first before we started this seminar.
The fruit.
As we talked about food the last time, this fruit almost immediately came to my mind.
Does the kiwi come from New Zealand?
Is it named kiwi because of the bird? I mean, if you look at both of them, I do kinda see a resemblance.
The answers are no and yes (kinda).
No, the kiwi doesn’t originally come from New Zealand. Actually, it was brought over from China. That’s why in the beginning it was called Chinese gooseberry. Now, New Zealand is on the top list of kiwi producing countries in the world. (China is still number one)
Yes, the name indeed has something to do with the bird. Theoretically. I already said that the bird started this trend of naming everything New Zealandish after it.
So I guess when New Zealand growers wanted to give the Chinese gooseberry a different name to give it better market appeal, kiwifruit really wasn’t far off.
Kiwi, kiwi, kiwi… I’m really not sure if those are all the things that can be found under this name. If you want to give it try, you might want to go to a Kiwi shop and ask for a kiwi. You’ll see what you get.
