Amazon Quiz (July 30): This fruit was named after which country’s national bird?
Brazil
New Zealand
Thailand
Malaysia
Answer: New Zealand
When the All Blacks overcame Great Britain 15-0 in the inaugural rugby test in 1905, the New Zealand Free Lance journal published a cartoon depicting a plucky kiwi that evolved into a moa. After the All Blacks’ contentious loss in Cardiff, this image was reproduced by portraying a kiwi unable to swallow Wales.
The Westminster Gazette featured a kiwi and a kangaroo on their way to a colonial convention the same year. By 1908, the kiwi had displaced pictures of moa, fern fronds, a young kid, and a lion cub as the prominent symbol for New Zealand in cartoons, particularly sporting ones.
Another theory about how Kiwis became Kiwis has its origins in shoe polish. A Scottish-born inventor living in Melbourne in the early 1900s created a boot polish that not only shined shoes but also maintained, waterproofed, and softened the leather. He named it Kiwi polish in honour of his wife’s hometown of Oamaru, New Zealand.
During World War I, the polish was so effective that it was copied by the British and American military, and it wasn’t long before New Zealand soldiers were no longer referred to as Fernlanders or En Zedders, but instead as Kiwis, a moniker that gradually spread to all New Zealanders.
The nickname ‘Kiwi’ fits wonderfully with the national ethos of New Zealanders. New Zealanders, like the bird, is steadfast, adaptive, and a little eccentric. The Kiwi bird, as a symbol, transcends age, gender, ethnicity, and creed, and New Zealanders welcomed it. A writer dubbed the New Zealand representative rugby league side the Kiwis in 1921, and the moniker has been officially used since 1938.
Soon, New Zealanders were eating Kiwi-brand bacon, banking with Kiwibank, rooting for a horse named Kiwi in the Melbourne Cup, and going to bed when ‘The Goodnight Kiwi’ finished the day’s television show. Remember that Kiwis are named after a bird, not a gooseberry, the next time you encounter one.
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