The Names for Banana in the Russian Language of the 18th c.

This article examines a number of names for the banana plant (Musa spp.) and its fruits in the 18th-century Russian. It traces the emergence and use of the following phytonyms: muza, musa, muza mudryh, muza bananskaya, banan, banana, bananas, bananiyan, bananiera, bala, indijskaya figa, indijskaya smokva, indejskaya smokovnica (Indian fig), indejskij banannik, Adamova smokovnica (Adam's fig), Adamovo yabloko (Adam's apple), rajskoe yabloko (apple of Paradise), rajskaya figa, rajskaya smokva (apple of paradise), pizans, pizang, plantan, planten, plantejn, plantin, plantins and figyuejra. The diversity of nominations is due to the fact that the Russian language used lexemes from Western European languages, which, in turn, were borrowed from the local languages of the territories where the banana plant was grown. Some of the names are motivated by the idea of the banana as a tree that grew in paradise. Various approaches to rendering foreign-language plant names — transliteration, transcription, calques, word-formation, and morphological adaptation — also contributed to the emergence of variants.

Lexemes denoting banana names are recorded primarily in translated literature of various genres (fiction, scientific treatises, travelogues, and encyclopedias). These plant names are much less common in the works of Russian-language authors (newspaper publications, travelogues, memoirs and botanical, encyclopedic, or explanatory dictionaries), which are often compilations of foreign-language sources.