The progress of the word from west to east, and then from east to south-west, and from thence northwards, and its various changes in that progress, are rather strange.
One would have supposed that the Arabs, living near the region of which the fruit was a native, might have either had a name of their own for it, or at least have borrowed one from Armenia. But they apparently adopted a slight variation of the Latin, το παλαιον ονομα, as Galen says, εξελελειπτω.
The Arabs called it
برقوق
or, with the article,
البرقوق
.
The Spaniards must have had the fruit in Martial's time, but they do not take the name immediately from the Latin, but through the Arabic, and call it albaricoque. The Italians, again, copy the Spanish, not the Latin, and call it albicocco. The French, from them, have abricot. The English, though they take their word from the French, at first called it abricock, then apricock (restoring the p), and lastly, with the French termination, apricot.
From malum persicum was derived the German Pfirsiche, and Pfirsche, whence come the French pêche, and our peach. But in this instance also, the Spaniards follow the Arabic
بريشان