why dehydrated grapes and plums are called raisins and prunes, respectively, but we don’t name other dehydrated fruits different from their original names?

Question

Where did the naming convention come from for these two fruits and why isn’t it applied to others?

Edit: this simple question has garnered far more attention than I thought it would. The bottom line is some English royals and French peasants used their own words for the same thing but used their respective versions for the crop vs the product. Very interesting. Also, I learned other languages have similar occurrences that don’t translate into English. Very cool.

In: Other

Answer 1

It’s usually when two words from different languages are used at the same time, eventually they become more specific. This happens more often as a result of migration/invasion as opposed to more peaceful means of cultural exchange. The meat example is usually the most cited example but my favourite is Bow and Arrow. Both words mean bow, arrow deriving from arcus, bow from Boga I think. When you have two languages co existing, using both words wouldn’t be uncommon. Eventually arcus came to refer to the projectiles and boga the actual bow.