It is a fairly well-known fact that the Normans, people who would later be known as French, contributed about 30% of the words that are now part of the English language, following their conquest of England in 1066. This is one of the reasons why English is such a fabulous language; its dual Romance and Germanic roots mean a larger functional vocabulary than most other languages.

It also results in some weird anomalies. Have you ever thought about why "pork" comes from the pig? Why don't we just call it pig? When we eat it, it's called "pork", and when we eat cattle it's called "beef", and sheep is "mutton". This is because all three words are derived from the Norman French: porc, bœuf and mouton.

This tells you a lot about who was doing the farming and who was doing the eating in Norman England. Incidentally, it doesn't answer the question about why, in English, you eat chicken and not poulet, but presumably the Normans looked down on chickens and left them for the riff-raff.

Names and food is such an odd topic.

A big and complicated hoo-ha has broken out between the meat substitute industry and the Department...