Blackberry: a fruit with four naming traditions

 I picked these blackberries in early August — a little earlier than I remember from childhood in the north west, though the south east brings its crops on sooner. The English name feels plain enough, just a black berry, and Old English already had ‘blæcberie’. But across Europe the fruit has taken on other names: Germanic languages linked it to the bramble or even to bears, while Romance tongues tied it to the mulberry through Latin ‘morum’ from Greek ‘moron’. Celtic languages stayed close to English, speaking of ‘dark berries’. Behind one familiar fruit sits a whole web of traditions, each seeing it slightly differently.