Pizza is an amazing combination of textures and tastes, affording
one an almost limitless variety of ways to combine ingredients to personalize
their experience. But where did pizza as we know it come from? More
specifically, what is the origin of the word PIZZA? In this post I will offer a
new proposal for the etymology of PIZZA. I will suggest that pizza as we know
it--and call it--is far older than previously believed, pre-dating even the
ancient Romans.
Origins of Pizza in Italy
The earliest mention in literature of something resembling pizza
in Italy comes to us from the Roman poet Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19 BCE). In
his epic poem the Aeneid, a band of Trojan refugees led by Aeneas had
earlier received a prophecy that they would know they had reached their
promised land when hunger forced them "to eat tables" (absumere
mensas, Aeneid 3.257).
After the Trojans land in Italy, first at Cumae, near modern day
Naples, they travel up the coast and are camped on the beach at the mouth of
the Tiber River. Vergil describes them putting "fruits of the field"
(pomis agrestibus) upon "spelt cakes" (adorea liba)
which he further described as "scanty bread" (exiguam in Cererem;
Aeneid 7.109-113). When they ate all of it, including the bread on which
they had placed the other ingredients, Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, jokes:
"Hey, we even eat the tables?"
(Heus, etiam mensas consumimus? Aeneid 7.116)
And then they realized they had just fulfilled the prophecy. But
note how the food they ate, ingredients put on a thin layer of bread and then
eaten whole, does indeed resemble pizza. And it is intriguing that Vergil
describes the Trojans eating this food immediately after they had spent some
time in the area of modern-day Naples.
Pizza in the Area of Naples
The fact is, there are numerous foods around the world that are
very much like pizza,
"The pizza then seemed like the wheel of a cart"
(La pizza te parea roto de carro)[1]
Presumably he means that, in his memory, pizza in “the good old
days” was bigger than pizza was in the time of his writing. But the important
thing, based on the analogy to the wheel of a cart, is that he is totally
talking about pizza as we know it.
The Oldest Reference to Pizza
- 997 CE
It seems certain, based on the information above, that a food like
pizza, called pizza, was indeed invented somewhere in the area of Naples. But
the oldest reference to pizza by that name is actually centuries earlier than
Velardiniello. In a Latin language document dated to the year 997 CE, we read
how a food gift was to be offered in perpetuity to the Bishop of Gaeta on both
Christmas and Easter. And this food gift included:
"Twelve pizzas"
(duodecim pizze)[2]
Gaeta is just 96 kilometers north on the Italian coast from
Naples. And since these twelve pizzas are referred to in the context of other
food items, such as a pork loin (una spatula de porco), there can be no
doubt that the duodecim pizze here are indeed food. And there is no
reason to doubt that they are referring to pizza as we know it. What is very
intriguing about this early reference to pizza is that the form of the word
seems so "Italian" in the midst of an otherwise purely Latin text.
And that brings us to the question of what Italian even looked like in the year
997 CE.
The Double Z (ZZ) in Italian
Modern Italian words with a double Z (ZZ) derive from different
original sources. For example, the word piazza (town square) comes from
the Latin word platea. The Italian word puzzo (stench) comes from
Vulgar Latin putium. The important question for the word pizza, however,
is, "What was the status of the double Z in 997 CE?"
To answer this, let's look at the some of the oldest archaic
Italian texts we have, Dante and St. Francis.
The double Z is attested in Dante (1265-1321), indeed, in the very
first line of the Inferno:
In the middle of the path of our life...
Nel mezzo del cammin de nostra vita...[3]
The double Z there is derived from the Latin word medium
(middle).
But just a little earlier than Dante, the double Z is not attested
in the famous Canticle of the Sun by St Francis (1182-1226). St. Francis uses
the word tribulatione in line 24 of his hymn. This word is abundantly
attested as tribulazzione in later Italian, before evolving into the
modern tribolazione.
What this means is that the double z in the phrase duodecim
pizze in 997 CE is quite peculiar. While superficially appearing to be
“Italian,” it may actually be something else.
An Italic Etymology of the
word “Pizza”
Before the Romans spread out from their city state to take over
all of Italy, there were other peoples on the peninsula speaking languages
other than Latin. To the immediate North, for instance, there were the
Etruscans, whose language is still not well understood, but it seems unrelated
to Indo-European. Elsewhere, such as in the area of Naples, the inhabitants
spoke various dialects of languages which, while not Latin, seem to be related
to Latin through a common ancestor, much as Spanish and French are both related
by being descended from Latin itself.
Linguists call this the Italic language family. Members such as
Oscan and Umbrian are attested in an unfortunately small sample of surviving
inscriptions. But what we do have is enough for us to understand certain
features of these languages. An interesting way in which they differ from Latin
is that where Latin has a ‘QU’, the other Italic languages have a ‘P’. So, for
instance, the Latin word quid (what) is attested in Oscan as pid.
So here is my proposal. The word ‘pizza’ is actually of Italic,
not Latin (or Italian) origin. It came about in the following way.
1) The most central feature of the food is the ability to
personalize it--to have it be “What it may be.” Whether you want extra cheese,
or not, whether you want pepperoni, or not, your pizza can be whatever you want
it to be. The Latin for the phrase “What it may be” would be quid sit.
2) An ancient Italic inscription seems to attest the equivalent of
quid sit. An inscription in the Paelignian dialect, which is closely
related to Oscan, includes the words:
This has been interpreted by some Italic scholars to be, in fact,
the equivalent of quid sit (What it may be) or quidquid sit
(Whatever it may be).[5]
What we today know as PIZZA was once called, in ancient Italic and
in the area of modern-day Naples, as “What it may be,” a name derived from the
choice of toppings.
3) The two words PID.SEI (What it may be) evolved into a single
word PIDSEI. A modern example of a food named after a merged phrase is the
‘Whatchamacallit’ candy bar by Hershey’s. In fact, ‘Whatchamacallit’ basically
means the same thing as PIDSEI.
4) The sound DS easily evolves into a Z. Think, for instance, how
you actually pronounce the end of the word ‘birds’. PIDSEI became PIZZEI, and
then PIZZE.
5) While the word PIZZE was originally a singular, it was misinterpreted
by speakers as a plural.
A singular form ‘pizza’ was created by analogy to the multitude of
other words in Latin/Italian which have a plural ending -ae and a singular
ending -a.
(The Latin diphthong -ae had begun to change to -e very early,
evidenced by the fact that the word ‘saepe’ (often) is spelled ‘sepe’ in 1st century
CE graffiti from Pompeii.)
6) Other words for foods have undergone the exact same
transformation of starting as a singular, being reinterpreted as a plural, and
then generating a new singular form. Examples include the word ‘cherry’, which
was borrowed from the Old North French singular form cherise. Once the
singular word cherise was misunderstood as the plural, the word ‘cherry’
was created to be the singular form. Similarly, the Old English word for ‘pea’
was pease (plural pesen). Pease was misinterpreted as the
plural, resulting in the creation of the singular word ‘pea’.
Conclusion
I’ve shown that the oldest attested instance of the word pizza (duodecim
pizze) in 997 CE can be explained as coming from a merger of the Italic
words that would have meant “What it may be” (Latin, quid sit; Italic PID
SEI --> PIDSEI --> PIZZE). Italic inscriptions have been found at
Pompeii, which means that non-Latin Italic languages were still being spoken in
the area of Naples as late as 79 CE. The question that remains is whether an
Italic word for a food, let alone the food itself, could have been passed down
for another 900 years without detection.
The fact is, words for foods are surprisingly stable. When people
adopt a new food from another culture, they ordinarily keep the original name.
The Latin word for ‘cheese’ (caseus) was borrowed by the
ancient Germanic peoples at some point prior to the 5th century CE. Since they
apparently did not know how to make what we know as ‘cheese’ prior to
encountering the Romans, they borrowed not only the expertise, but also the
name of the food. And the word persisted in the Germanic languages so that
today the word for that delectable product in German is Käse. (Our English word ‘cheese’ is also derived from
the Latin).
The survival of the Latin word for ‘cheese’ in Germanic would be
equivalent, time-wise, to the survival of the Italic word for PIZZA in the area
of Naples.
The people in the area of Naples could easily have passed on
for hundreds of years, not just the recipe of an ancient flat bread with
toppings described in Vergil’s Aeneid, but an ancient name for that food which
preceded the Romans themselves.
I hope my research and proposal can shed light on the origin
of the word PIZZA. It would not be until modern times that someone put pieces
of pineapple on that Neapolitan food. Even if the matter of the etymology of
the word pizza is eventually settled, pineapple on pizza will certainly remain
a polarizing matter!
[1] Velardiniello,
Stanza 13.1
[2] Codex Diplomaticus Cajetanus. Monte Cassino: Typis Archicoenobii Montis Casini,
published 1887, p. 181.
[3] Inferno 1.1.
[4] The ancient inscription was preserved in a 16th century CE manuscript. Conway,
Robert. The Italic Dialects. Volume 1. Cambridge University Press, 2013
(Originally published in 1897), pp. 237-238.
[5] von Planta, Robert. Grammatik Der Oskisch-Umbrischen Dialekte,
Volume 2. Cambridge University Press, 2012 [Originally published in 1892), p.
654.
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