- Tomato
Many good things are imported from abroad. Every time a new category is introduced, people have one more opportunity to name things, but the attitude of waiting and watching our ancestors is confusing.
Generally speaking, Chinese people have two attitudes towards naming new things. One is casual, and the other is exaggeration.
The casual feature is that it doesn't take too much effort and tongue, and it ends up in a leisurely manner. The same thing comes from a foreign country, as long as it is matched with one of the local items, and then the mother's surname is added to the front. Such as tomatoes (tomatoes), watermelon, sweet potatoes, guava, zucchini, celery...
Shrunken potatoes and enlarged sweet potatoes
The characteristic of exaggeration is that it takes a lot of effort to name it, which often leaves a deep impression. One method is to zoom out and the other is to zoom in. The former is like potatoes and the latter is like sweet potatoes.
The French call the potato "Diguo", which is a apt metaphor and very real. However, the Chinese have shrunk the potato by an unknown number of times and call it "beans"—how can there be such a big bean? It is nothing more than catchy to read and easy to remember. Because for the common people, fruits are indeed a luxury, but beans can't be cooked anymore. And the potato is really not a great guy.
Obviously sweet potatoes, how come they become sweet potatoes? Almost any melon is bigger than sweet potato: winter melon, watermelon, pumpkin, cantaloupe... As the saying goes, "you get melon when you grow melons, and you get beans when you grow beans." People have to "fabricate" such a "underground melon" out of thin air, and it will echo the "bean in the soil" far away.
It turned out that the exaggeration accidentally fell on the ground.