Why does French have two words for potato — patate or pomme de terre?

France has two words for potato, and which one you use signals register, not meaning. Pomme de terre (“apple of the earth”) is the official, formal term — the one on packaging and in recipes. Patate, the word this market seller actually uses for « un kilo de patate », is the everyday spoken version — borrowed via Spanish patata from the Taíno word batata. It’s fully standard, just casual, the way “spud” sits next to “potato” in English.

That Taíno-via-Spanish word batata originally meant sweet potato — the everyday potato only picked up the name once it reached French port cities like Marseille in the 19th century, well after pomme de terre was already established. So at a French market, both words are correct: patate is simply what you’ll hear far more often, especially from vendors and in casual conversation, exactly as in this clip.