Why is it called "ketchup"?

Question

In England and Australia it is called Tomato Sauce.

Answer 1

Early ketchup was first made of anchovy or mushroom.

"The most popular theory is that the word ketchup was derived from "koe-chiap" or "ke-tsiap" in the Amoy dialect of China, where it meant the brine of pickled fish or shellfish[8]. Some people prefer the Malayan word "kechap" (spelled ketjap by the Dutch), which may have come from the Chinese in the first place. The Malay word means taste. And in some time in the late seventeenth century, the name and some samples might have arrived in England where it appeared in print as "catchup" in 1690 and then as "ketchup" in 1711. These names stuck with the British, who quickly appropriated them for their own pickled condiments of anchovies or oysters." - Wikipedia

It also says that when the term ketchup first came into the English language, it appeared in print first as "catchup". It later became ketchup.

Answer 2

Why is it called "ketchup"?

Ketchup Origins





Ketchup is a word that clearly does not have origin in the English language because it has no intrinsic meaning. But it also doesn't sound French, Spanish or German either. Now, there is a possibility that the word was invented and was designed to not have any intrinsic connection with anything else. This is the null hypothesis.

One day, I had a ketchup epiphany. I suddenly realized that in Cantonese, a Chinese dialect that I grew up speaking, the word we use is "keh-tsap", and the two words translate into "tomato" and "sauce". Now given that ketchup means nothing in English and "keh-tsap" means tomato sauce in Cantonese and ketchup is really tomato sauce, this seems to be a strong case for this Cantonese Origin Hypothesis.

Tomato sauce, however, is not one of the many sauces used in Cantonese dishes. There is no indigenous sauce that even closely resembles ketchup. The closest is a watery tomato juice that is thickened with starch and spiced up. This sauce is never used as dipping though. It is mainly used almost like how gravy would be used.

This is not necessarily a problem though. It could be that whoever came up with the English word once overheard a Cantonese speaker refer to this tomato-based sauce as "keh-tsap" and used it because it sounded more interesting than "Tomato Sauce".

Now there is another hypothesis that is exactly the flip-side of the Cantonese Origin Hypothesis. When I first suggested the Cantonese Origin Hypothesis to a native English speaker who had learned to speak Mandarin, another Chinese dialect, she pointed out that many Chinese dialects borrow from English words. For example, toast is "do-sih" and lemon is "ling-mung" in Cantonese. The words have no intrinsic connection to either. And since ketchup is such a Western thing, it must be the case that Cantonese speakers borrowed the word and the semantic correspondence was a mere coincidence. This is the Borrowed Coincidence Hypothesis.

To see if other people had the same weird ideas I was having, I searched the net on the origins of the word ketchup. All the sources I found said basically the same thing which pinpoints the origin to China, but with a twist:

The most popular theory is that the word ketchup was derived from "koe-chiap" or "ke-tsiap" in the Amoy dialect of China, where it meant the brine of pickled fish or shellfish. Some people prefer the Malayan word "kechap" (spelled ketjap by the Dutch), which may have come from the Chinese in the first place. In any case, some time in the late seventeenth century, the name and perhaps some samples arrived in England where it appeared in print as "catchup" in 1690 and then as "ketchup" in 1711. These names stuck with the British, who quickly appropriated them for their own pickled condiments of anchovies or oysters.

So instead of supporting the previous Cantonese Origin Hypothesis, these sources posit instead an Ancient Chinese origin hypothesis. So not only is ketchup not a brand name, as most Americans think, but it started out not having any tomato sauce in it and halfway across the world. Why is it that everything seems to originate in China?

But if this hypothesis is true, it would mean that the original ketchups had no tomato sauce and that they eventually did. And then what happened was that Cantonese speakers then borrowed the word and it turned out, accidentally, to be the exact sounds for "tomato" and "sauce".

Yet since tomato sauce has always been called "keh-tsap" in the Cantonese dialect which has its roots in the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907), this is actually a case of where two different languages somehow managed to come up with the same word for the same thing independently.

The fact that the original ketchups had no tomato sauce makes it impossible that the original words were taken from the Cantonese dialect in the 1690's. But it also means that the Cantonese dialect did not borrow from English because they've always called it that.

So are we stuck up a hypothesis of Absolute Coincidence? Historical evidence contends that it is the only valid hypothesis. But is there a simpler explanation we are missing?



Notes on Chinese:

The Cantonese word "keh" is a shortened form of the complete word "faan-keh" for tomato. So we can refer to tomato sauce as "faan-keh-tsap" or "keh-tsap". I think that the former refers more to the traditional kind of sauce and the latter to ketchup as Americans know it. At a restaurant in Hong Kong, if someone wanted ketchup they would have to use "keh-tsap" or the waiter might be confused.

In Mandarin, the shortened form is not often used and tomato sauce is referred to as "faan-tsie-je".

And the real difference between how the traditional tomato sauce/juice is used in Chinese cooking is that it is used in cooking, while ketchup is only used after cooking.

Answer 3

Ketchup

The word Ketchup is derived form the Greek word "Ketupolous." In the year 1500 BC a Greek scholar by the name of Stefanos Rasmus Saridakis was conducting an experiment with fish eggs and Clopus wood sap (dark amber colour tree grown only in this small region off the coast of Athens ). After heating the fish eggs to a below boiling temperature, he added the tree sap into the puree then immediately cooled the liquid to air temp. After tasting the sauce, he supplemented the flavor with a touch of Mediterranean sea water and served the secret sauce with fish and shellfish. For over 4 centuries his recipe remained a family secret until the recipe was finally stolen from Macedonian trades man. From this point the sauce was used throughout most of Europe mostly controlled by Serbian and Macedonian business men. Finally after 100's out of Serbian control, northern European countries got hold of the recipe, changed the name to Ketchup then embedded this sauce into there culture. Centuries later finding its way to the America's in Dutch merchant ships.

Answer 4

Originally this sauce was made out of pickled fish. It originated in Eastern Asia; the word ketchup is used in Chinese, Malay and Indonesian (e.g., kecap manis - traditional spelling 'kitjap manis'). English and Dutch sailors brought the Asian ketchup to Europe, where many flavourings, such as mushrooms, anchovies and nuts, were added to the basic fish sauce. Whether the tomato was also added to ketchup in England or Australia is not certain, and it is likely that this important event first happened in the USA.

Answer 5

Frankly, I thought you just called it "sauce", according to "Worst Year of My Life Again". And I was wondering if ketchup is called sauce, what do they call mustard? But tomato sauce makes more perfect sense!

Answer 6

Ketchup (sometimes spelled catsup) is derived from the Indonesian word ketjap manis, which is a sweet, salty sauce popular in Indonesian cuisine. Ketjap came to Europe in the 17th century, through the Dutch (who were heavily involved in Indonesia) and also the British. In those days, the name "ketjap" was likely to be applied to a wide range of southeast Asian sauces, including what we today would think of as chutneys, tuong, sambal, and other spicy, tangy sauces used either in cooking or on prepared food. (A similar word confusion happened with "curry." "Curry powder" is a British mispronunciation of the phrase "kari podi," or Kaffir lime leaf, which is one ingredient in many "curries." In traditional Indian cuisine, of course, there's no such thing as prepared curry powder, each recipe has its own unique spice signature.)

When the Dutch and British brought ketjap to their New World colonies (remembering that the part of North America today known as New York was previously known as New Amsterdam and colonized largely by the Dutch), the condiment began changing to adapt to local ingredients, particularly tomatoes and refined sugar (remember "triangle trade" -- sugar grown by slaves in Jamaica was made into molsasses, then shipped to New England to be distilled into rum, which in turn paid for more slaves in Africa to work the plantations in Jamaica).

As for "ketchup" and "catsup," this appears to be a regional difference among different cultures and languages in southeast Asia. The "ts" and "ch" sounds are often interchanged among related languages in Asia, and often cause confusion to this day; for example, Cantonese speakers learning Mandarin often have a great deal of difficulty learning to distinguis the hard "ts-" sound (as in "hai yici lai," or "please come again) from the hard "ch-" sound (as in "gongong qiche," or bus). Early Romanizations of the name appear as both "ketsap" and "ketjap," probably indicating that the Dutch and the English had as much trouble as the Cantonese and the Mandarin.

Today, of course, asking for "tomato sauce" in the US will get you something basically like Italian marinara sauce, or a close relative. US "ketchup" is nothing like marinara sauce -- it's very very sweet and very very tart, served in bottles at tableside and used for spreading on certain sandwiches, fried potatoes (chips to the British and Australians) and other foods.

And I couldn't find the recipe when I was looking just now, but I distinctly recall reading, several years ago, a recipe for pineapple ketjap, made with crushed pineapple, cider vinegar, chiles, soy sauce, and molasses, plus various other spices such as mustard, ginger root and others I can't remember. It sounded like it would be a wonderful thing to brush on grilled chicken or pork, or to serve with broiled shark.

Answer 7

because it is used during a game of ketch....abd catch up with that saucy sue,,,,,,,feelin a suit,...toot toot toot and there she goes down the lundry shoot..hickory dickkory DOCK

Answer 8

They proudly called it that so people would not buy and better name brand.