The trouble with fruits
Like all Greeks, I refer to all mandarin oranges, clementines and tangerines as “mandarins”. But each time we go shopping with my JBQ, this is a problem and it has started to anger me.
Eugenia: Sweetie, get some mandarins.
JBQ: They don’t have mandarins, they only have clementines!
or
Eugenia: Sweetie, want a mandarin?
JBQ: Oh, this is not a mandarin, it’s a tangerine.
We don’t classify them differently in Greek, and there is a good reason for that: they all look exactly the same. And be assured that we produce all these varieties near my home in Greece in large quantities (we export to Russia too), so we are not talking about clueless harvesters here. We are talking about practical people instead. If there is not a really good reason to call a fruit a different name, we simply don’t. Why complicate matters? I let all the botanists to call each variety the way they want to, but in common language I see no reason to distinct between these fruits. There is a reason to distinct between the blood, sweet or bitter oranges, because it has a major impact in the taste and looks, but in the mandarin’s case this is not really an issue.