Amazing Fact About Fruit Kiwi

Marketers didn’t like the name Chinese gooseberry, so they renamed the fruit “kiwi” after a bird that it resembles.

 Even though “kiwi” is slang for someone from New Zealand, the kiwifruit is actually native to China. It’s been so important to Chinese culture, in fact, that it is still the country’s national fruit. From China, the fruit was introduced into New Zealand in the early 1900s. 

Although the Chinese name is “yang tao,” New Zealanders soon dubbed the fruit “Chinese gooseberry.” When U.S. importer Norman Sondag decided to market the fruits in the United States, he wanted a new name so that he wouldn’t have to pay the high tariffs then in place for berries. 

A colleague suggested the name melonette, which he rejected because melon tariffs were also high at that time. Eventually the name “kiwifruit” was suggested by New Zealand grower Jack Turner, inspired by the brown, furry-looking national bird of New Zealand. That was the name under which the fruit was introduced into North America, and it is still widely called the “kiwi” to this day.