[pxeger1]

Wiktionary[1] says it’s “probably ultimately from Hokkien Chinese 膎汁 (kê-chiap, “fish sauce”)”. So not a million miles off?

[1]: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/ketchup

[SeanLuke]

chiap sure? Ke no. In Cantonese, fish is yu. But yeah.

Also: I had thought it was originally Malay.

[arp242]

Malay "ketjap" or "kecap" (different types of soy sauces) comes from Chinese "kê-chiap". It may be directly inspired by Malay languages without knowledge of Chinese and still be "ultimately from Hokkien Chinese".

[samatman]

Hokkien/Min and Cantonese are not mutually intelligible languages.

[SeanLuke]

Of course. We were talking about the coincidence in Cantonese.

[resolutebat]

膎 preserved fish, not 鱼 plain old fish.

[SeanLuke]

Ah! Well it still doesn't help (it's haai in Cantonese). But that's interesting.

[me_me_me]

Tomatoes are relatively late addition to european cuisine (1500ish), there would be influences from a silk for centuries before. It sounds quite probable.

[SeanLuke]

This comment sounds like you might mistakenly think tomatoes are Chinese.

[me_me_me]

I meant the origin for the word ketchup might have came as word for some type of sauce from the silk road, or tale of it from merchants eating it while traveling the silk road

[huytersd]

Not sure exactly what you’re saying but the Europeans brought tomatoes to India and East Asia.

[supertofu]

A reminder that tomatoes are native to South America, and did not exist anywhere else until colonization of the Americas.

[okr]

Thank god for coloni, umm, borderless migration of people!