Chapter COCHIN-LEG to COCO of C by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

(coche) are the fruits of palm-trees, and as we have bread, wine, oil, and vinegar, so in that country they extract all these things from this one tree.” —Pigafetta, Viaggio intorno il Mondo, in Ramusio, i. f. 356.

1553.—“Our people have given it the name of coco, a word applied by women to anything with which they try to frighten children; and this name has stuck, because nobody knew any other, though the proper name was, as the Malabars call it, tenga, or as the Canarins call it, narle.”—Barros, Dec. III. liv. iii. cap. 7.

c. 1561.—Correa writes coquos.—I. i. 115.

1563.—“… We have given it the name of coco, because it looks like the face of a monkey, or of some other animal.”—Garcia, 66b.

“That which we call coco, and the Malabars Temga.”—Ibid. 67b.

1578.—“The Portuguese call it coco (because of those three holes that it has).”— Acosta, 98.

1598.—“Another that bears the Indian nuts called Coecos, because they have within them a certain shell that is like an ape; and on this account they use in Spain to show their children a Coecota when they would make them afraid.”—English trans. of Pigafetta’s Congo, in Harleian Coll. ii. 553.

The parallel passage in De Bry runs: “Illas quoque quae nuces Indicas coceas, id est Simias (intus enim simiae caput referunt) dictas palmas appellant.”—i. 29.

Purchas has various forms in different narratives: Cocus (i. 37); Cokers, a form which still holds its ground among London stall - keepers and costermongers (i. 461, 502); coquer-nuts (Terry, in ii. 1466); coco (ii. 1008); coquo (Pilgrimage, 567), &c.

[c. 1610.—“None, however, is more useful than the coco or Indian nut, which they (in the Maldives) call roul (Male, ru).”—Pyrard de Laval, Hak. Soc. i. 113.]

c. 1690.—Rumphius, who has cocus in Latin, and cocos in Dutch, mentions the derivation already given as that of Linschoten and many others, but proceeds:—

“Meo vero judicio verior et certior yocis origo invenienda est, plures enim nationes, quibus hic fructus est notus, nucem appellant. Sic dicitur Arabicè Gauzos-Indi vel Geuzos- Indi, h. e. Nux Indica. … Turcis Cock-Indi eadem significatione, unde sine dubio Ætiopes, Africani, eorumque vicini Hispani ac Portugalli coquo deflexerunt. Omnia vero ista nomina, originem suam debent Hebraicae voci Egoz quae nucem significant.”—Herb. Amboiu. i. p. 7.

„ “… in India Occidentali Kokernoot vocatus. …”—Ibid. p. 47.

One would like to know where Rumphius got the term Cock-Indi, of which we can find no trace.

1810.—

“What if he felt no wind? The air was still.
That was the general will
Of Nature
Yon rows of rice erect and silent stand.
The shadow of the Cocoa’s lightest plume
Is steady on the sand.”

Curse of Kehama, iv. 4.

1881.—“Among the popular French slang words for ‘head’ we may notice the term ‘coco,’ given—like our own ‘nut’—on account of the similarity in shape between a cocoa-nut and a human skull:—

“ ‘Mais de ce franc picton de table
Qui rend spirituel, aimable,
Sans vous alourdir le coco,
Je m’en fourre á gogo.’—H. VALERE.”

Sat. Review, Sept. 10, p. 326.

The Dict. Hist. d’Argot of Lorédan Larchey, from which this seems taken, explains picton as ‘vin supérieur.’

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