suyo long cucumber

Hey guys,

I'm curious about the etymology of this Chinese cucumber variety. I was especially wanting to know if the "long" is the transliteration of 龍 or if that's the English word..

Thanks!

Actually, we have at least two kinds of "cucumbers".
One is long, and the other is short.
If suyo long cucumber refers to the long ones, then "long" might have nothing to do with 龍.

Oh okay, but what does suyo mean? Is that supposed to be from Chinese?

viajero_canjeado said:

Hey guys,

I'm curious about the etymology of this Chinese cucumber variety. I was especially wanting to know if the "long" is the transliteration of 龍 or if that's the English word..

Thanks!

Personally, I'm confused possibly because of my ignorance.

1. "Long" is how you would pronounce the character for 龍 in chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese (deeper O sound - more emphasis of the throat)). I can see how someone would write "Long" for the pronounciation.

1b. 龍 means dragon. Not sure how that relates to cucumber.

2. "Suyo" to me sounds spanish. In Chinese, "suoyou" means "all".

3. Could you have meant "Suoyou long gua" where "Gua" is cucumber ? But even then, i'm not sure what this phrase means ... maybe it's Dong rather than Long ?

Suoyou Dong gua ... means "All the winter melon" written in chinese as 所有(的)冬瓜

4. Cucumber in mandarin chinese is "Huang Gua" ... or literally Yellow Mellon. I believe it's the same characters in Cantonese with no slang equivalent for it.

Sorry viajero_canjeado, but that's my two cents. Please clarify for us. Where did you hear/see or find this ?

Here's a picture of them; and this is a brief description of the cucumber from a seed company's website.

On the seed packet I encountered is written: Suyo Long Cucumber, Asian/Burpless variety.

"Long" is definitely the pinyin translation of 龍, however with this cucumber it might easily just be the English word since they do grow to be rather long. But still I'd like to know what "suyo" traces back to in Chinese.

viajero_canjeado said:

Here's a picture of them; and this is a brief description of the cucumber from a seed company's website.

On the seed packet I encountered is written: Suyo Long Cucumber, Asian/Burpless variety.

"Long" is definitely the pinyin translation of 龍, however with this cucumber it might easily just be the English word since they do grow to be rather long. But still I'd like to know what "suyo" traces back to in Chinese.

Yes, i agree. In this particular example, the "long" part of the description is definitely english and not chinese. I've seen "long cucumber" sold here at our local supermarket as well.

I have reason to believe "Suyo" is not of chinese origin.

Take a look at this website here. It is a chinese website and they refer to it as "Suyo黄瓜" (are URLS allowed ?)

Do a google search of Suyo黄瓜

If you do find it, i'm curious to know also. But i think it's a word of antiquity and barely used anymore. Unless someone is a Cucumber specialist here, i think it'll be find to hard to find its origin.

If you wish, do a google search of 黄瓜的种类 and see what you end up with ? I didn't realize china had so many varieties of 黄瓜, but none of their names sounds like "suyo". And it seems that they keep modifying these 黄瓜 (to suit the seasons and the various diseases and climates between North and South China), so the very first suyo variety may have originated from the grandfather cucumber which is no longer in production.