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

Because Guillaume le Bâtard invaded England in 1066, won the Battle of Hastings, and became William the Conqueror. England was then ruled by French-speaking nobility who gradually assimilated over centuries. The Anglo-Saxon words the conquered peasants used for food became associated with the live animals and fresh fruits and vegetables they handled. The French words for food became associated with the cut-up meat and dried fruits and vegetables the nobility ate. In French, boeuf is cow, porc is pig, poulet is chicken, raisin is grape, and prune is plum.