Plants with Arabic Names
Musa
المَوْز
Musa
The scientific name of the banana genus, Musa, is the Arabic word mawz in Latin dress. In the Latin translation of Ibn Sina's Canon, musa renders mawz; Linnaeus then made it the name of the genus in 1753.
- Source of the name
- From an Arabic word
- From the Arabic word
- mawz
- Genus
- Musa
- Species shown
- Musa
Wadghiri (2/191) dates the French word to 1816, 'through scientific Latin musa (the banana tree)', the source of the family name Musaceae; the banana itself came 'from the Indian islands'.
Mawz itself is not originally Arabic: etymologists trace it into Arabic from languages further east, and Arabic then carried it to Europe. It is also said that Linnaeus meant Antonius Musa, physician to the emperor Augustus, but only one source says so.
geoff mckay, CC BY 2.0
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Sources
- Wikipedia: Musa (genus) – etymology
- عبد العلي الودغيري، العربيّات المغتربات ٢/١٩١
- Wiktionary: Musa
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