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And indeed in most Romance languages (with the notable exception of Hispanic languages). English is showing its weirdness again.

• vidarh 3y ago
  Which Romance languages other than French? I can't find any. Looks to me as if most languages will have some variation of citrus/citron in use as a broader classification for the genus of citrus fruits, but that variations over lemon/limon/limone inherited via Arabic and Persian seems to be more common for the specific plant/fruit C. limon/lemon.
  • pvaldes 3y ago
    > Which Romance languages other than French? I can't find any. There are several, including the second language with most native speakers in the planet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#/media/File:Romance_languages.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#/media/File:...
• bonzini 3y ago
  Is it in any Romance language other than French? It's limone in Italian, limon in Spanish, lămâi in Romanian, and those are the four main families of romance languages. It's indeed curious that English adopted the Romance name for lemon and French adopted the Germanic name.
  • jaclaz 3y ago
    In Italian these specific fruits are not "limoni" they are "cedri", but in latin there is citrus (as the name of the plant/tree) and citreum (as the name of the fruit) that means lemon so it is not strange that the French has citron that seems not Germanic at all. It is not clear at all whether what the Romans had were limoni, cedri or lime/limette, or all of them and whether they were only imported or actually cultivated locally. The lemon/limone etc. come from Arabic/Eastern languages and has evidently been "imported" in most romance languages. The scientific name of the lemon, "Citrus limon" settles it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon