Does Japanese have an original word for banana besides the loanword バナナ?


I see banana be written バナナ so since it's katakana I guess they imported it
from English or Spanish where it's written the same.

**But does Japanese have an original word for bananas?**

I guess that if bananas didn't exist in Japan before fluid contact with the
western world there isn't an original word, but is this so? I've read on the
Internet that Japan produces a small fraction of the bananas it consumes, so
bananas could have always existed in Japan I suppose?




The most important older word is **_bashō_** , 芭蕉. It comes from Chinese, and
the first known occurrence of the word in Japanese materials is from ca. 706,
in the _Nara Ibun_ historical records.

Bananas are native to the Eastern tropical areas spanning India, Southeast
Asia and Australia. However, wild species don't make good edible fruit; they
had to be domesticated, and that happened in Papua New Guinea. Meanwhile, non-
edible varieties were prized as an ornamental plant in ancient China. The
plant was introduced from China into ancient Japan for this purpose; edible
bananas only came in much later.

Bananas have various names in Chinese, and one of them was 芭蕉 _bājiāo_ , which
entered Japanese along with the plant (and is now pronounced _bashō_ ). The
_-jiāo_ 蕉 part is a suffix for broadleaf plants in general. I don’t know
what’s the etymology of the _bā-_ 芭 part (any help welcome!), but it has the
general look and feel of Chinese loanwords to me; it wouldn't surprise me if
it came from the name of the plant in some other Asian language.

The most famous Japanese _haiku_ poet is Matsuo Bashō; this is actually his
pen-name, derived from a banana plant he had outside of his quasi-hermit's
hut.

Other Chinese names which entered Japanese, but are less common, include 甘蕉
_gānjiāo_ (jp. _kanshō_ ), “sweet broadleaf”, dated 1712 in Japan; and 香蕉
_xiāngjiāo_ (jp. _kōshō_ ), "fragrant broadleaf".

An uncommon, native Japanese word for it is _Niwa-mi-gusa_ , which the _Kokugo
Daijiten_ dictionary glosses as 庭忌草 garden-funeral-herb. Apparently there was
a Chinese folk belief that planting one in your garden would bring bad luck,
and this was transmitted to Japan. Banana plants of the kind brought to Japan
flower very rarely, and this fact was seen with some mystique; from which the
plant was also called 優曇華 _udonge_ – the Japanese pronunciation of
[uḍumbara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udumbara_\(Buddhism\)), a kind of fig
which, according to Buddhist legend, blossoms only once every 3000 years.

Sources: Japanese Wikipedia, _Kokugo Daijiten_ , Pleco Chinese dictionary.




The most important older word is **_bashō_** , 芭蕉. It comes from Chinese, and
the first known occurrence of the word in Japanese materials is from ca. 706,
in the _Nara Ibun_ historical records.

Bananas are native to the Eastern tropical areas spanning India, Southeast
Asia and Australia. However, wild species don't make good edible fruit; they
had to be domesticated, and that happened in Papua New Guinea. Meanwhile, non-
edible varieties were prized as an ornamental plant in ancient China. The
plant was introduced from China into ancient Japan for this purpose; edible
bananas only came in much later.

Bananas have various names in Chinese, and one of them was 芭蕉 _bājiāo_ , which
entered Japanese along with the plant (and is now pronounced _bashō_ ). The
_-jiāo_ 蕉 part is a suffix for broadleaf plants in general. I don’t know
what’s the etymology of the _bā-_ 芭 part (any help welcome!), but it has the
general look and feel of Chinese loanwords to me; it wouldn't surprise me if
it came from the name of the plant in some other Asian language.

The most famous Japanese _haiku_ poet is Matsuo Bashō; this is actually his
pen-name, derived from a banana plant he had outside of his quasi-hermit's
hut.

Other Chinese names which entered Japanese, but are less common, include 甘蕉
_gānjiāo_ (jp. _kanshō_ ), “sweet broadleaf”, dated 1712 in Japan; and 香蕉
_xiāngjiāo_ (jp. _kōshō_ ), "fragrant broadleaf".

An uncommon, native Japanese word for it is _Niwa-mi-gusa_ , which the _Kokugo
Daijiten_ dictionary glosses as 庭忌草 garden-funeral-herb. Apparently there was
a Chinese folk belief that planting one in your garden would bring bad luck,
and this was transmitted to Japan. Banana plants of the kind brought to Japan
flower very rarely, and this fact was seen with some mystique; from which the
plant was also called 優曇華 _udonge_ – the Japanese pronunciation of
[uḍumbara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udumbara_\(Buddhism\)), a kind of fig
which, according to Buddhist legend, blossoms only once every 3000 years.

Sources: Japanese Wikipedia, _Kokugo Daijiten_ , Pleco Chinese dictionary.

