damascenum

Latin prunum damascenum meant 'plum of Damascus.' The Romans knew the fruit came from Syria, and they named it after the city that served as the regional trading hub. Pliny the Elder, writing around 77 CE, listed the Damascus plum among the finest varieties imported to Rome. The tree itself likely originated farther east, in the mountains of modern Iran and Turkmenistan, but Damascus was where it entered Western commerce.

When the word crossed into Old French as damaisine and then Middle English as damascene, the plum and the city were still linked. English speakers in the 1300s knew exactly what they meant: a plum from Damascus, carried west along the same routes that brought silk and spices. The Crusaders brought fresh cuttings home to England and France in the 1100s, and the trees took root in cooler European soil.

By the 1500s, English had shortened damascene to damson. The city vanished from the word. Farmers in Kent and Shropshire grew damson trees without any thought of Syria. The fruit became so thoroughly English that damson jam, damson gin, and damson cheese are now filed under 'traditional British preserves.' Nobody asks where the name came from.

Damascus has given English at least three words: damask (the fabric), damascene (the metalwork), and damson (the plum). Each one commemorates a different commodity that passed through the city's gates. The plum is the humblest of the three, but it has lasted the longest. Damask is a specialty. Damascene steel is a legend. Damson jam is in every farmhouse cupboard in England.