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Comment by Cherian | Hacker News Reader

I come from Kerala, the southernmost state in India referenced in the article. My last name is Thomas and every now and then people in the US look at me bewildered when I tell them my name – “But you don’t look Spanish”. I take it as an opportunity to give them a bit of a history lesson – “Do you know Christianity came to India 14 centuries before the US? And Columbus was looking for these Indians selling black pepper?”

Surprises people so much to know that Christianity exists in India, let alone that St. Thomas died in India [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_the_Apostle

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A lot of people think Marco Polo was the first European to travel to the far east, but in fact his father and Uncle at least had already been there and he travelled back with them. This sort of travel along the silk routes had probably been going on since Roman times at least, and if so why not the spice routes to India and beyond as well?.

Since you seem to know a bit of history, would you happen to know how the name "Jose" (pronounced 'jos', without the 'e') came to be so popular in Kerala? My last name is Jose. And people outside Kerala pronounce it like the Spanish 'José'. My best guess would be that it was adapted from the Portuguese.

Please, could you also educate them and tell them that Spain is a country in Europe? It seems that many US-americans believe Spanish is a race (whatever they think a "race" is) instead a nationality.

Nobody in the US think Spanish is a race rather than a nationality. There's an artificial "Hispanic" term politicians invented to encompass all Spanish speakers.

Ignorant Americans may conflate all from Central America as "Mexicans", but that's about it.

Most Americans who never studied the Spanish language are probably ignorant of the differences between Castilian Spanish and Spanish as used in the Americas.

Differences between "Castillian Spanish" (I don't like that term at all, more on that on [1]) and Latin-American Spanish are only on pronunciation of some consonants. The Royal Spanish Academy (Real Academia Española) accepts allow all of those dialects as rightful variants of Spanish language.

[1] What some politicians call "Castillian Spanish" is the Spanish language spoken in all parts of Spain. It is idiotic to call "Castillian" to a language were some dialects of Spanish (West/East-Andalusian and Canarian [from Canary Islands]) are very similar to Latin-American Spanish.

Both race and nationality are social constructs. Countries too.

Would you call "British" or "English" to a US-American citizen based on their language, then?

Similarly one wonders how chilli peppers are so prolific in Asian cuisine, but were only introduced during the columbian exchange.

Like potatoes in the British Isles.

Do you mean how (the method by which it was achieved)? Perhaps you really wanted to know why?

You might also compare coffee, and tea, there.

I imagine it's about fashion really, the new product usurps the old, it garners higher prices initially, then there's a glut, unless there's a reason to go back the product becomes entrenched.

As far as I know, producing chilli is much easier than producing pepper.

Capsacin can be addictive

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