Dictionary.com has informed me that May 15-19 is Dictionary Week. Word nerd that I am, I’m devoting today’s column to certain words in order to celebrate not just Dictionary Week, but also Asian American Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month. More on that tongue twister later; first, a few loanwords.

Most of the foreign words now found in English dictionaries are food names, like sushi, kalbi and pretty much everything on a Chinese restaurant menu. But did you know that ketchup (the word, not the condiment) has Asian origins? According to National Geographic, ketchup comes from the Hokkien Chinese word ke-tsiap, which is a sauce made from pickled or fermented fish. That explains why the condiment is also called catsup.

The word ketchup first appeared in print in the late 17th century, when English sailors brought the sauce home from China. Western chefs tinkered with the recipe, adding tomatoes sometime in the 1700s. For some reason, while it was known as ketchup or tomato soy in Britain, the concoction was more commonly called tomato catsup in the U.S. In 1876, F&J Heinz began selling Heinz Tomato Catsup in America. Soon after, according to a company spokesman, Henry John Heinz changed catsup to ketchup, in order to distinguish it from competitors. Hunt’s eventually followed suit, but Del Monte didn’t change its spelling until 1988.

Today, most Americans call it ketchup, although the word catsup may still be used by folks out in the boondocks — which, you may be surprised to learn, is a word of Filipino origin.

During the U.S. occupation of the Philippines (1898-1946), American soldiers adopted the term bundok, a Tagalog word for mountain, using it to refer to any remote or far-off location.

Similarly, the word tycoon also came to America via the U.S. military. During Commodore Matthew Perry’s visit to Japan in 1853 and 1854, he learned the word taikun, meaning great ruler and referring to the shogun. Perry introduced the word (with Western spelling) to President Abraham Lincoln’s administration, and it became a nickname for Lincoln among his cabinet members. Later the word was used to describe business magnates and other wielders of power.

A century earlier, both the word and the practice of tattoo were popularized in the English-speaking world by Captain James Cook. During a three-year voyage throughout the South Pacific, beginning in 1768, Cook documented the Polynesian art of tatau. Though tattooing did exist in the West long before then, it was not common, and not known by that term. When Cook’s crew returned with elaborately inked skin as well as the instruments used to achieve the designs, tattooing became part of the seafaring culture, and eventually gained mainstream acceptance.

Now, a few words about the unwieldy official title of this month.

In 1968, a group of student activists at UC-Berkeley proposed the term Asian American as a preferred substitute for Oriental, which was felt by many to be demeaning and derogatory. In the late 1980s, the U.S. Census Bureau expanded the term to Asian Pacific Islander and in 1992, the federal government designated May to be Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month.

The APA title did not sit well with those who identify as Pacific Islanders rather than Pacific Americans, nor with folks who objected to Asian and Pacific being combined into one group. The use of AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) to describe Americans who trace their roots to Asia or Oceania was intended to be more inclusive, but it still lumps together AAs and PIs. Also, many AAs prefer more specific terms (Korean American, Japanese American, etc.) because of the wide variance in Asian cultures.

Today, since President Joe Biden declared it such in 2021, the official designation is Asian American Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Heritage Month. If you wanted to learn about the history and culture of each ethnic group under this huge umbrella, it would take all month just to scratch the surface.

As I type out the phrase “AANHPI Heritage Month,” a couple of Hawaiian words come to mind: pupule and poho.

n Kathy Collins is a radio personality (The Buzz 107.5 FM and KEWE 97.9 FM/1240 AM), storyteller, actress, emcee and freelance writer whose “Sharing Mana’o” column appears every other Wednesday. Her email address is kcmaui913@gmail.com.