To add a little more confusion, there are two words in Catalan for it. The map says “Pistatxo”, which is not wrong, but the synonym I and many people around me use is “festuc”, which coincidentally starts with F, so there goes your political border theory… or not!
Definitive proof of a Catalan vs. Daco-Romance link! /s
We also have fistaszki in Polish, but it doesn’t mean pistachios - it’s what we call peanuts sometimes.
In Turkish, when you say “fıstık” alone, people would understand peanuts as well. However peanut is “yer fıstığı” while pistachio is “Antep fıstığı” or for the pink ones “Siirt fıstığı”.
Do ya like fistiks?
I wonder what is the origin of this word, since all sound similar. Hence the F-P transition.
The origin seems to be Persian (from where the plant comes actually as many other fruits) from which the word entered as a loan to ancient Greek (πιστάκιον) and later Latin (pistācium).
Interestingly enough from middle Persian “pstk’” the initial sound became aspirated (like the “Farsi” name itself for the modern language from Middle Persian “Pārsīk”).
And by Turkish/Ottoman domination the f- variant spread in the Middle East.
Relevant detail: Ottoman Turkish ⟨فستق⟩ fıstık borrowed it from Arabic ⟨فُسْتُق⟩ fustuq, that borrowed it from Middle Persian - the same variety as Greek and then Latin did. So odds are that the f-variation was caused by Arabic rendering a foreign [p] as [f], and probably predates Persian itself internally undergoing a p→f shift. Source.
A lot of fruits, trees and nuts come from Persia… the name of the “peach” in some European languages is closely related to it, for example English “peach” from old French “pesche” is a contraction of medieval latin “persica”, cfr Romanian “piersică”, Italian “pesca” (and in some Italian dialects it’s called “persica”/“persego”) and similar variations.
