The ice cream flavor neapolitan first begins appearing in 1868. Today, neapolitan ice cream almost universally implies vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry, but the three composing flavors were initially not standardized and would vary. One common trinity was pistachio, vanilla, and cherry, which resembled the newly-established (1861) Italian flag. And so the flavor came to be named after Naples, despite its actual origin in Prussia. Admittedly, quality ice cream did also have strong associations with Italy and its gelaterian legacy at the time.

As noted, neapolitan ice cream was actually invented by the royal chef of Prussia, Louis Ferdinand Jungius. In 1839, Louis published a book of experimental recipes he’d prepared for King Frederick William III of Hohenzollern at his Berlin estate. He described a Pückler as vertically layered ice cream flavored with strawberries, raspberries, greengages, cherries, and apricots. It was named after Prussian nobleman Hermann Pückler, a name we can all agree to be glad did not stick. By 1862, his suggested Pückler recipe instead had layers of apricots, quinces, strawberries, and raspberries. By 1903, the standard recipe called for the now familiar vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate flavors. They were still arranged like a layer cake, rather than our familiar horizontal sections. Why those three flavors? At the time, they were the three most popular ice cream flavors in the US, a fact that remains true today.

Why is the adjective form of Naples Neapolitan in the first place? Naples was founded in the 700s BCE as the Greek colony of Παρθενόπη (Parthenope). Two hundred years later, it was renamed Νεάπολις (Neápolis). By around 1000 CE, the systematic sound changes that distinguished Vulgar Latin from modern Italian had altered the city name to its contemporary Napoli. Meanwhile, different systematic sound changes over in France rendered the city name as Napples, then Naples by the 1400s, which is when the city name was first borrowed into English. So the English name of the city is directly borrowed from French, while its English adjective form is based on its Classical Greek name.

Parthenope is a Classical Greek name that’s a straightforward compound of παρθένος (parthénos), meaning “virgin”, and ὄψ (óps), meaning “voice”. In Greek mythology, one of the Sirens bears the name, specifically the daughter of muse of dance Terpsichore and river god Achelous. In 1850, the eleventh asteroid ever discovered, 11 Parthenope, was named after the mythological siren. This fit the pattern of the first ten asteroids, all named for women in Greek and Roman mythology. The first ten women were actually all specifically gods, so perhaps its discoverer, Annibale de Gasparis, chose to honor a demigod instead because he was an astronomer at the University of Naples.

Neápolis is interesting to me precisely because of how uninteresting it is. It’s an even more straightforward compound of νέα (néa), meaning “new”, and πόλις (pólis), meaning “city”. The major city’s name for the past two thousand five hundred years has been the maximally uninspired “New City”. This phenomenon is hardly unique, as New City and its linguistic equivalents is one of the most common city names in the world. It’s also an illustrative example of how place names seem to defy their original meaning. Just look at some of the English new cities and how strange it feels to do a surface analysis of their names: Newcastle, Newton, Newport, New Haven.

Most cities originally named New City get renamed if they become important and well-known, so I enjoy marveling at the ones that never did. Но́вгород (Novgorod) is Russian for Newtown. Villanova is Italian for New Village. 𐤒𐤓𐤕-𐤇𐤃𐤔𐤕 (qrt-ḥdšt), romanized as Carthage, is Phoenician for New City. เชียงใหม่ (Chiiang Mai) is Thai for New City.

I also learned that while Kota Bharu is Malay for New City and Nevşehir is Turkish for New City, despite their significance and population, I had never encountered either name before.

If you enjoyed this exploration, you may also enjoy my much briefer history of pizza (1931).