In the parade of inanities that accompanied the parade of nations at the Olympic opening ceremony I was, of course, listening most intently for what gem of wisdom Katie Couric or Bob Costas would contribute about New Zealand ...
What I learnt was that the one-time Kiwifruit Marketing Authority, known after that as the Kiwifruit Marketing Board, and now as Zespri New Zealand ("Zespri" -- a commercial neologism in case you wonder) has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams at associating "kiwifruit" with New Zealand. Maybe too well.
What Katie told the audience (apart from saying that NZ has less than 4 million people, when in fact there are slightly more ... making it somewhat less "sparsely populated" than she thinks. I digress) was that
The New Zealanders are known as the kiwis. Named not after the fruit but the bird.
Back in the day, at least until the early '80s, the green flesh, furry brown skinned fruit that Americans know as a "kiwi" was known in New Zealand as a Chinese Gooseberry, after its native land.
But then in the '80s the growers got serious, levied themselves to pay for export promotion, and came up with the clever idea of calling it the kiwifruit to associate the fruit with New Zealand rather than China ...
It seems they have succeeded all too well in the United States for now most Americans live in blissful ignorance that a "kiwi" is a flightless bird (you can think what you will of that being the national symbol of a country, but it's no worse than the gopher as a state symbol) and not a green furry fruit.
Although American English is sometimes not the most parsimonious, in this case the "fruit" suffix has well and truly been lost in conversation, though I note that many supermarkets do actually display the item as a "kiwifruit."
It does make for odd conversations, however, when people with a moderate amount of knowledge ask why the national symbol of my erstwhile home country is a fruit ... if only they knew is all I can say.
Posted by robe0419 at August 13, 2004 10:37 PM | TrackBack