How did coffee get its name?

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October 27, 2021
How did coffee get its name?

The morning coffee: indispensable, beneficial, and occasionally even our savior for a good start to the day. But from where does the beneficial bean gets its name, where did it come from and how did it find its way into our daily life?

The word "coffee" entered the English language in 1582 through the "koffie" of the Dutch language, in turn, borrowed from the "kahve" of the Ottoman Turkish language, which is deriving from the "qahwah" of the Arabic language. The word "qahwah" is sometimes an alternative trace of the Arabic "quwwa" ("power, energy") or "Kaffa", the medieval Ethiopian realm from where the shrub was exported to Arabia. These etymologies for "qahwah" have in any case all been disputed in various ways. There are a number of legends surrounding the discovery of coffee about how and where this delicious hot beverage was first drunk. We present the two most famous ones here:

The first story, it is said, happened to the Muslim prophet Mohamed in the sixth century. During an illness, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to him and handed him a vessel with coffee. After drinking this, he got well again and was better than ever.

The second legend, believed to have taken place about three centuries later, is the most common. A goatherd named Kaldi noticed that his goats were livelier than usual. He then watched them eat the fruits of a tree that seemed to induce this new liveliness. To solve the riddle, the shepherd brought the coffee cherries to a sage. Disappointed with the bitter taste of the raw coffee, they threw it into the fire, where it was roasted and released a delicious smell. They boiled the beans with water and drank their first coffee.

The worldwide spread of coffee

Over time, the new delicacy spread and became the "wine of Islam": Since Muslims do not drink alcohol, coffee became a welcome change from tea for many. The current name of the popular hot drink was also created during this time - "Coffee" comes from the Arabic word "Qahwah" and translates as "the stimulating". In the 15th century, coffee spread beyond the borders of Arabia: via Mecca and Medina, it also found its way to the Egyptian metropolis of Cairo, at which time Yemen became the most important coffee trader. 

Great importance was attached to the new commodity: in order to deny trading partners the opportunity to grow the plant themselves, it was scalded with hot water before it was exported, which made it incapable of germination. 

Coffee came from Ethiopia centuries later, namely from the 14th century AD, to the eastern Arabian Peninsula - today the states Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain are located here. It was probably slave traders who brought the coffee with them from their "missions".

From now on, Arab merchants started trading coffee. They tried to prevent the spread of coffee seeds as much as possible so as not to get additional competition. In the area of what is now Yemen, new coffee-growing areas emerged to meet the increasing demand. In Europe and India, too, people began to show an interest in coffee as a commodity. Coffee was introduced to the American continent for the first time in the 17th century - later large coffee-growing areas emerged in South and Central America.

The first known coffee houses were opened in Mecca in the 16th century. However, there were always phases in which the consumption of coffee was forbidden by the Islamic priesthood. It was not until the 19th century that coffee was legally permitted as a drink throughout the Islamic world.

Coffee houses in Europe

In Europe, it was Venice, a major trading power, who discovered coffee for itself in the 16th century and made it known across the continent. Within the next century, coffee became popular everywhere - initially, however, only very wealthy people could afford to pay the high prices for coffee. It was slowly becoming fashionable to drink coffee with milk.

Numerous coffee houses have opened in major European cities such as London, Paris, and Vienna. The coffee houses also became socially important: They were popular meeting places for political, artistic, and intellectual associations.

Holland initially had a " monopoly " on European trade because it had coffee grown on a large scale in its overseas colonies - especially on the Indonesian island of Java. "Monopoly" is the name of a market situation in which there is only one supplier for a certain product. Later, the other major European powers opened up regions in which they began to grow their own coffee.

Coffee production today

Today, coffee is one of the most important commercial products in the world - in figures, the amount produced and traded annually is around eight million tons (One ton is equivalent to 1,000 kilograms.) The largest coffee producers in recent years were by far Brazil, then Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia, and Ethiopia, the country of origin of coffee. Most recently, almost a third of the coffee produced worldwide came from Brazil. The most important customer countries are the USA, Germany, France, Japan, and Italy. Finland has the highest coffee consumption per capita - statistically speaking, every Finn drinks an average of five cups of coffee a day.

Effect of coffee on the human body

The main active ingredient of coffee is "caffeine" - this substance is thought to be responsible for the stimulating and slightly antidepressant as well as the awakening effect of coffee. Caffeine in its pure form is a psychoactive drug and is considered a "stimulant".

Imaging methods have shown that the ability of the human brain to concentrate is enhanced by the consumption of caffeinated substances. In particular, the regions of the brain in which one suspects short-term memory are strongly activated under the influence of caffeine. Caffeine stimulates the production of the neurotransmitter " dopamine ".

Coffee has a number of health benefits. Coffee contains, for example, the so-called "antioxidants" which help the human body break down "free radicals" - the same applies to cocoa and tea, by the way. Free radicals are disease-causing decay products of biochemical reactions in the body. They arise during the "combustion process" in human cells, but can also get into the body from outside through food intake and breathing.

Due to its high antioxidant content, coffee is said to have a preventive effect against cancer. Because of its caffeine content, coffee is also considered a preventive agent against the "neurological" diseases of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's ("neurological" means "affecting the nervous system"). So overall, there are a number of positive effects coffee has on the mind and body.