You say potato, etymologists say batata. It’s National Potato Day in Ireland, so let’s dig up the roots of the beloved spud.
Potato
English cultivates its potato from the Spanish patata, a variant form of batata. But the batata is actually the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas), completely unrelated to what we commonly refer to as the potato.
That’s a lot of potatoes.
Christopher Columbus is credited with bringing batata to Spain – and into the Spanish language – at the end of the 15th century. The crop and word thereafter spread throughout Europe and, thanks to Portuguese traders, to many parts of Africa and Asia.
The word batata comes from an indigenous Central American language, perhaps from Haitian Taíno, the language of the self-same people who inhabited much of the pre-Columbian Caribbean and Florida. Taíno also gives English the word hurricane, a word much on the minds of many along the Southeast coast today.
In English, the earliest record of potato comes from English naval commander and notorious slave-trader John Hawkins in his 1565 travel writings: “These potatoes be the most delicate rootes that may be eaten, and doe far exceede our passeneps or carets.” Batata, meanwhile, is attested in translation by the 1570s, noted as a “victaill of muche substaunce.”
Then, in the 16th century, Spanish conquistadors brought back what we now familiarly refer to as the potato (Solanum tuberosum) from the Peruvian Andes, where it was known as papa. Papa is a word for “potato” in Quechuan, a language also ultimately responsible for the words jerky, guanine, and Coke.
This plant especially proliferated in England, Ireland, and the US. In 1597, English botanist John Gerard discussed “Virginia potatoes,” thanks to the vegetable’s erroneous associations with Sir Walter Raleigh, who, according to tradition, first planted the tuber in Ireland. Sir Francis Drake and that same John Hawkins also compete for this title; the actual, direct source is unclear .
In the early record, it can be hard to tell whether writers are referring to the batata or the potato. But potato took over as the generic term for such tubers by the early 1700s, with the distinguishing sweet potato emerging by the mid-1700s.
Potato or batata, the English language definitely didn’t call the whole thing off.
Mashed Radish 
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Thanks for the update on the potato or batata. I got to have my potatoes, boiled, fried or baked. I still have a problem with sweet potato fries, but I should be able to get used to it. I have grown Finnish potatoes, which are excellent, after you boil them, squeeze them and they pop right out of the skin, not large, very nutritious. Thanks for educating us on so many different issues. Best regards, Leland
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Thanks, Leland! For every culture, it seems, there’s a preferred treatment of the potato.
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Probably by way of the Portuguese, ‘batata’ appears in various forms across India, most deliciously as the ‘batata vada’: a chickpea battered, spiced mashed potato fritter that presents street side following the smallest amount of rain and is best enjoyed with a garlicky hot sauce and a robust cup of ‘chai’. Now there’s another word whose etymology is very interesting . . . .
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Hi. I’m trying to figure out if the following entry in C.S. Lewis’ correspondence is a misprint, lacks a word (e.g. grew) or if batata may have been slang c. 1914 in Britain for something else..? Lewis was writing to his brother about how they bragged to English kids about N. Ireland:
“…it would now give me no appreciable thrill to convince the fellows of Magdalen that my father was the largest batata in Europe.” (Lewis, C. S.. The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 1)
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