Solanum melongena, the Linnaean name. From Dravidian to Arabic All the aubergine-type names have the same origin, in the Dravidian languages. Modern descendants of this ancient Dravidian word include Malayalam vaṟutina and Tamil vaṟutuṇai. The Dravidian word was borrowed into the Indo-Aryan languages, giving ancient forms such as Sanskrit and Pali vātiṅ-gaṇa (alongside Sanskrit vātigama) and Prakrit vāiṃaṇa. According to the entry brinjal in the Oxford English Dictionary, the Sanskrit word vātin-gāna denoted 'the class (that removes) the wind-disorder (windy humour)': that is, vātin-gāna came to be the name for eggplants because they were thought to cure flatulence. The modern Hindustani words descending directly from the Sanskrit name are baingan and began. The Indic word vātiṅ-gaṇa was then borrowed into Persian as bādingān. Persian bādingān was borrowed in turn into Arabic as bāḏinjān (or, with the definite article, al-bāḏinjān). From Arabic, the word was borrowed into European languages. From Arabic into Iberia and beyond In al-Andalus, the Arabic word (al-)bāḏinjān was borrowed into the Romance languages in forms beginning with b- or, with the definite article included, alb-: Portuguese , , . Spanish , . The Spanish word was then borrowed into French, giving (along with French dialectal forms like , , , and ). The French name was then borrowed into British English, appearing there first in the late eighteenth century. Through the colonial expansion of Portugal, the Portuguese form was borrowed into a variety of other languages: Indian, Malaysian, Singaporean and South African English brinjal, brinjaul (first attested in the seventeenth century). West Indian English brinjalle and (through folk-etymology) brown-jolly. Thus although Indian English brinjal ultimately originates in languages of the Indian Subcontinent, it actually came into Indian English via Portuguese. From Arabic into Greek and beyond The Arabic word bāḏinjān was borrowed into Greek by the eleventh century CE. The Greek loans took a variety of forms, but crucially they began with m-, partly because Greek lacked the initial b- sound and partly through folk-etymological association with the Greek word μέλας (melas), 'black'. Attested Greek forms include ματιζάνιον (matizanion, eleventh-century), μελιντζάνα (melintzana, fourteenth-century), and μελιντζάνιον (melintzanion, seventeenth-century). From Greek, the word was borrowed into Italian and medieval Latin, and onwards into French. Early forms include: Melanzāna, recorded in Sicilian in the twelfth century. Melongena, recorded in Latin in the thirteenth century. Melongiana, recorded in Veronese in the fourteenth century. Melanjan, recorded in Old French. From these forms