alt Hacker NewsThe recorded English-language etymology for "ketchup" suggests that the word comes from one of the Chinese dialect's word for tomato. Do you have any idea which Chinese word sounds like ketchup?
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bwv848 • today at 8:59 AM
茄ke2 汁zap1, but if I remember it correctly, Dan Jurafsky believes it is from 喼git1 汁zap1, worcestershire sauce
taneliv • today at 5:26 AM
Not exactly a Chinese dialect, but Vietnamese calls tomatoes "cà chua": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/c%C3%A0_chua .
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fsckboy • today at 5:49 AM
possibly Hokkien 膎汁 (kê-chiap, “fish sauce”) via Malay kecap ~ kicap “any dark clear sauce from soy, fish etc”
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My personal theory based on nothing more than the vibe of the thing is that it comes from the Malay/Indonesian word ‘kecap’ (which is pronounced almost identically to “ketchup”), the word for sweet soy sauce. This is soy sauce that is thickened and sweetened with palm sugar, and I could see European cooks attempting to replicate it based on the vague descriptions given by sailors, and ending up with ketchup.