•The table compiles the West African names that appear to be cognate with English ‘banana’. In the
Mande languages, many of
these are contracted and compressed, which speaks of some antiquity.
•It has been suggested that the source of this word is Indian vannan < purported Sanskrit varana (Blakney 1963:77). However, this is not confirmed by the
relevant dictionaries; the nearest form is Sanskrit vanakadalii (वनकदल).
•Garcia da Orta (1563) mentions palana on the Malabar Coast,
and this does look like a convincing source for the Mande names.
•The Portuguese may have picked
up this name in India and carried the small diploids to
West Africa, along with the Asian name.
•This became fixed in English as
‘banana’ and then was borrowed back into Camerounian languages in the colonial era. From Cameroun it
spread into the interior, surfacing in Nilo-Saharan languages as
an indirect loanword.