If pitta refers to pita bread, as in the round flatbread originating in the middle east, I can tell you the word is not used in Arabic.
A thing as basic as a bread staple to have different names in the same region seems very significant.
Does anyone have any insight into this? I'm definitely going to try to dig deeper.
I used to go to a "pizza" restaurant in Jaffa. It claimed to be the oldest pizza restaurant. It has high lip edges and eggs... I think it was like shakuka on a type of pita. I wish I could remember what they called it.
Nah. It's just the result of a long history. In Italy, different towns can call the same specialties with completely different names (crescentina / gnocco fritto, etc...), often simply out of spite or because of some long-forgotten feud.
40 years ago, in Rome a pizza was often called a "torta", which is the word the rest of Italy uses for sweet cakes.
Pita is a pretty basic word for a human staple. Large regional areas use a very similar word for millenniums. One culture doesn't and is just as interspersed as through time and space as the others.
In fact they share many texts.
I think this is different than the examples you provided.
I would describe some pizza's in Berkshire Country as a Torte.