PERSIAN APPLE

The noun peach was borrowed into the English language around the turn of the fifteenth century. At the time, it was mostly spelled peche or peoche, and the current spelling only became the norm around the 1600s (also when peachy as an adjective first started popping up, although it only meant "excellent from 1900 onwards). The word comes from Old French pesche, which was borrowed straight out of Medieval Latin pesca. In classical Latin, pesca was persica, a term that still survives in the scientific name of the "peach". That was a shortening of Latin malum Persicum, meaning "Persian apple". That's a translation of Ancient Greek malon persikon, with the same meaning. I've explored malon before - it's also the source of the words melon and marmalade - and persikon is from the name of the country, Persis. Finally, Persis has an uncertain etymology, but might either be from an ancient warrior tribe called Pars or from Sanskrit parasu, meaning "hatchet" or "axe".