Talk:Menemen (food)

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Menemen is Armenian

like everything else that is good that comes out from turkey, which is really West Armenia. everything bad is turkish. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.49.160.189 (talk) 13:46, 3 October 2012 (UTC) ok well let's give proof and citiation.. --58.213.51.42 (talk) 07:46, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Etymology

I removed this from the article:

"The word menemen is unclear in origin. Turkish etymological dictionary Nişanyan Sözlük states that the dish's name might have been derived from Menemen, a town and district in Turkey's İzmir Province, but this reliationship is unclear. The dictionary also hypothesize that it might have evolved from meleme/melemez, which means "lazy, lazy person" in Anatolian dialects of Turkish. The word might have been used to connote "lazy person's dish". The oldest attested usage of menemen is recorded in 1988."

Because there are so many secondary sources for the origin association with the town, including the New York Times [1] we would need a secondary source that says the etymology is unclear. The sources I've been able to find in English don't say anything about an etymology dispute. Spudlace (talk) 21:48, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Spudlace. The dish is originated from the town of Menemen.[2][3] That claim regarding the word's origin in the etymology section is ill-founded.--BSRF (talk) 15:28, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

@BSRF:, ill-founded? I have given Kubbealtı Lügatı and Nişanyan Sözlük. The latter has been quoted by haberturk, a secondary source 1. This and this also confirms unclear status of the word. Multiple sources can claim contradictory statements yet we need to give them both to have a balanced article. I also want to add that the so called "Turkish historian" in nytimes and Hurriyet they reference to is actually just a local journalist from the town of Menemen. --Gogolplex (talk) 10:16, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Both Kubbealtı Lügatı and Nişanyan Sözlük are fine secondary sources, and probably more reliable for Turkish etymology than the New York Times. WP does not require that sources be in English. The way they were cited before made them look like non-notable web pages, but in fact they are published dictionaries. I have restored the sources and improved the citation format. --Macrakis (talk) 15:51, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

I reverted Macrakis because there was no consensus for the change and an open talk page discussion. The town is literally eponymous and has been widely accepted by reliable English language sources as the origin for the name of the dish. Adding far-fetched alternate etymological that even the cited sources are not committed to - Nişanyan Sözlük indicates this alternate theory with a ? - is not an improvement. Spudlace (talk) 07:28, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

That the town and the dish have the same name is clear.

WP policy gives no precedence to "English language sources", and it is peculiar to give more weight for a question of etymology to an American cookbook of Jewish cuisine than to two published Turkish dictionaries.

In any case, WP policy is WP:NPOV -- all reputable positions should be reported on. Deleting well-sourced content is not helpful. We can debate the best way to phrase that content (note that I was careful to give the "name of city" theory first), but I don't see any basis in WP policy for deleting the Etymology section entirely. --Macrakis (talk) 16:43, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

The Jewish cuisine sources are fine. Izmir has a longtime, well-established Jewish community. From Gil Marks "For Sephardim, both of these methods of cooking eggs with vegetables date back to before the expulsion from Spain". He's probably wrong about this, after all, the expulsion is in 1492 and tomatoes don't arrive until the 1540s, but a North African/Sephardic origin is probable for many of the tomato-based stews found in modern Middle Eastern cuisines.

According to Google translate what the Nisanyan sozluk says is "The meaning relation with the town of Menemen is unknown. It may be related to the word meleme / melemez which means "lazy" in Anatolian dialects ("lazy meal"?)."

Attempts to link this tomato-based dish to interior Anatolian dialects by inventing etymologies are as spurious as the attempt by editors here to give more weight to fringe sources than mainstream ones. Spudlace (talk) 00:38, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

As far as I know, the two cited dictionaries are reputable, and not fringe. What evidence do you have to the contrary?

Re the Jewish cuisine sources, of course there has been a Jewish community in Turkey for a long time. But I don't see the relevance of that to the current discussion: cookbooks in general aren't as good sources for etymology as dictionaries. If Gil Marks has something useful about menemen, please add it to the article.

And kindly don't attack other editors. --Macrakis (talk) 15:38, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Possibly useful source

While looking for something else, I came across this short article by the food historian Joan Nathan, which gives a bit of the history of the dish and also mentions that the historian Oktay Ozengin has written at length about it. Both might be useful for this article. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 18:56, 26 August 2024 (UTC)