The cantaloupe melon gets its name from its brush with the pope.

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It is thought that cantaloupes originally were cultivated in Armenia before being brought and grown in a place near Rome, reputedly in the garden of the pope’s country villa. The place where the pope had this retreat is known as Cantalupo in Sabina and so when first the Italians, then the French and finally the English began growing and eating these melons they called them by the most famous place that they had set down roots.

I tried to find out why Cantalupo in Sabina  was called by this name and I found that there are several places in Italy called Cantalupo.

The scuttlebutt is that cantalupo is a name that means “howling of wolves” or “wolf song” but this etymology does not come from any recognized authoritative source so I’m treating it with a grain of salt.  Certainly canta does mean “song” in Latin and lupo means “wolf,” but it may just be coincidence.

The word melon has a history of its own.

Going way back, the what the Greeks thought of as a melon was what we would call an apple.  But when they added their word meaning “ripe” on the end making melopepon, it then became what we would call a melon.

The Romans grabbed this word but Latin speakers got lazy and dropped the pepon part so that by the time it got into French it was melon again, except it didn’t mean apple, now it meant melon.

This French word became an English word in 1398.

In truth some people say that melopepon didn’t mean “ripe apple,” but instead meant “apple gourd,” but it doesn’t much matter.

The first appearance of the word cantaloupe in English was in 1739 in Philip Miller’s Gardener’s Dictionary.

Miller was a highly respected horticulturist in his day and his dictionary went through many printings.  But the only place you can see a portrait of him is on a French edition of the dictionary printed in 1787 and there’s a problem with that.  The portrait is of the wrong Miller.

Somehow they got a hold of a portrait of a John Miller instead of Philip Miller, and pasted that on instead.

While I’m speaking of fruit, remember that I’ve set up poeticrecipe.com as a sort of celebration for thanksgiving.  Make up a poem, a recipe and send them in!