When you order a tuna fish sandwich, do you say "tuna" or "tuna fish"?

Sean@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 81 points –

Please vote on respective comments for results so we can see the results

100

You are viewing a single comment

Is there a tuna that is not fish?

There is, yes ... that's the main Spanish name for prickly pear.

Up until around 1907, your odds of encountering the fruit by the name "tuna" were about the same as the fish, when the first commercial canneries started to pop up in California... hence, a habit of clarifying between the two that stuck, even though most folks outside of the southwest had never heard of a tuna cactus.

Fascinating. I'll add a slight addition of info that prickly pears are actually present in the Midwestern and eastern parts of the US. Saw them growing in the wild at the Indiana Dunes national park last year. Very weird to see cacti that far north, but there they were.

Never knew the Spanish name for them!

1 more...