We were cutting up a pineapple last weekend and one of us asked the obvious question nobody actually asks: why is it called a pineapple? It's not an apple. It doesn't grow on a pine tree. It grows out of the ground on a spiky little plant in the tropics. The name is a full-on lie, and yet here we are, still calling it that in 2026.
Turns out the word "pineapple" is older than the fruit's discovery by Europeans. Back in the 1300s, English speakers used "pineapple" to mean what we now call a pine cone. That was the original meaning. Pine tree, apple-shaped thing hanging off it, pineapple. Made sense at the time. "Apple" was also a generic word for any round fruit or nut-like object, which is why we still have oddities like "love apple" (tomato) and "earth apple" (French for potato, pomme de terre).
Then in 1493, Columbus's crew ran into the actual fruit in Guadeloupe. They looked at this spiky, scaly, roughly cone-shaped thing and went, well, that looks exactly like a pineapple. So they called it one. The name stuck to the fruit, and the original pineapple got demoted to "pine cone" a couple centuries later to avoid the confusion.
Here's the part that's slightly maddening. Almost every other language on Earth uses some version of "ananas," which comes from the Tupi word nanas, meaning "excellent fruit." French, German, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Swedish, Polish — all ananas or a close cousin. English is one of the very few holdouts that stuck with the medieval mix-up. Spanish went its own way with piña, which is also "pine cone," so at least we've got compnay.
The really funny bit is that in 17th-century England, pineapples were so rare and expensive that hosting a dinner with one on the table was a full-blown flex. Wealthy people would rent a single pineapple for the evening as a centerpiece, not to eat, just to display. A rented pineapple. That's the kind of status symbol we can respect. The stone pineapple carvings you see on old British gateposts and staircases were basically the Georgian equivalent of parking a Range Rover in your driveway.
Naming things is hard, and once a name sticks it basically never leaves. Tomatoes were called "love apples" for centuries. Turkeys aren't from Turkey. Guinea pigs aren't from Guinea and aren't pigs. Koala bears aren't bears. Once enough people say a wrong thing confidently for long enough, it becomes the right thing. Language doesn't care about accuracy, it cares about what everyone agrees to.
If you've got a favorite weird-etymology story we should write up on a future Friday, send it our way. We collect these like other people collect stamps.
— Alexander & Amanda @ SBATC
