Avocado and maize. Words with roots in the indigenous languages of Spanish America

Abstract

Avocado and maize are New World crops that were brought by Spanish conquistadors and explorers from the New World to Europe from the end of the 15th and into the 16th centuries. Soon after, the Europeans themselves started to grow these crops and consume their produce, but retained their indigenous names. The term maize comes from Taíno language that was spoken in the Antilles. Avocado
is a term borrowed from nahuatl which was spoken in Mexico. The loanwords discussed in this article passed from the New World to Southern Europe and from the south to the north of the continent. The aim of this paper is to explore these loanwords in Icelandic and
other European languages.