What language is the origin of the word banana?

Answer 1

Spanish

Not accurate as is an adapted word by the Spanish. It is as follows:

Sixteenth century writers commonly call the fruit Apples of Paradise or Adam's Fig. The name banana gradually came into use in that century; it is the vernacular name given to the fruit by a tribe in the African Kongo. De Orta mentions it in 1563, while Hartwell (Pigafetta's Congo (1597) in Coll. Travels (1746) II, 553), says, "Other fruits there are, termed Banana, which we verily think to be the Muses of Egypt and Suria."

Thus the fruit, carrying with it the name which may have come all the way from its first station in the Indo-Malayan region, reached the Mediterranean and-after the colonization of those islands-the Canaries. From the Grand Canary it was introduced to the New World in 1516, according to the very definite statement of Captain Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, who heard the story "from many people." He ascribes the introduction to Hispaniola (Santo Domingo) to the "reverendo padre fray Thomas de Berlanga, de la Orden de los Predicadores"; "and from here," he continues, "it has spread to the other villages of the island, and to all the other islands populated by Christians, and has been carried to the mainland; and in every region where it has been established, it has yielded excellent results."