Greengage presents a charming case of dual naming: the same fruit carries entirely different names in different countries, each honoring a different person. In England, the greengage is named after Sir William Gage (c. 1657–1727), a baronet from Hengrave Hall in Suffolk, who introduced the plum variety to England from France around 1724. In France, the identical fruit is called reine claude, honoring Queen Claude of France (1499–1524), wife of Francis I, who was reportedly devoted to this particular plum.
The story of how the French name was lost in translation adds a layer of etymological comedy. According to tradition, Sir William Gage received plum trees from his brother in France, along with labels identifying the varieties. The label for the reine claude was lost during transit. When the trees produced fruit, the gardener at Hengrave Hall, unable to identify the variety by its proper French name, simply called it the green Gage plum — a name that stuck and eventually compressed into greengage. The
Queen Claude of France, the greengage's French namesake, was the daughter of Louis XII and Anne of Brittany. She was queen consort from 1515 until her death in 1524 at the age of twenty-four. The plum variety that bears her name may have been renamed in her honor during the sixteenth century, though the details are uncertain. What is clear is that the reine claude became one of the most prized dessert plums in France, valued
The greengage is considered by many pomologists to be the finest eating plum in the world. Its flavor — complex, intensely sweet, with notes of honey and rose — surpasses most commercial plum varieties. However, greengages are notoriously difficult to grow commercially: they are susceptible to disease, ripen unevenly, and bruise easily during transport. These characteristics have made the greengage a fruit of gardens and farmers
The naming pattern — different countries honoring different people for the same thing — appears elsewhere in botanical and scientific nomenclature. What English calls a Douglas fir commemorates the Scottish botanist David Douglas; what German calls Douglasie preserves the same name. But the greengage/reine claude split is particularly appealing because it reveals the contingency of naming: had the label not been lost in transit, English speakers might today eat reine claudes, and Sir William Gage would be forgotten by everyone except genealogists.