Let the language which is without sin cast the first stone.

I grew up on a farm along a small river called the Pomme De Terre and we didn't grow potatoes. But we did have a potato lifter to harvest the 1/2 acre or so we would grow for our own consumption.

There was also a small county picnic area in the middle of nowhere by the same name. And no one knew why it was there.

Herdöpfel (stove/cooking apple) in Swiss german. Kartoffel in germany. Guess there's some variety, since it's a relatively new crop.

The English for "ananas" is "pineapple", did the English really think they grew on pine trees?

"apple" used to be a generic term for fruit. So it's actually "fruit of the earth", the French are poetic like that

Look, we're talking people who call ninety-nine “four twenty ten nine”; you can't expect them to name things properly.

Some German speakers say "Erdapfel" which is literally "earth apple."

Counter point:

There was a time when "pomme" was used to name any fruit.

Recently I watched an press event with a Canadian politician, who was switching between French and English as we must sometimes. He was talking about a bag of apples (which his colleague was holding) costing a stupid amount of money. He made the mistake of saying a bag of potatoes, which i found fucking hilarious as I speak both languages and understand the mistake. Unfortunately for him, the people criticising him were morons and were like WHY WOULD HE SAY POTATOES IS HE STUPID.

isn't apple used in many languages as a generic term for fruit?... it's not like pineapple has anything to do with apples either.

I thought it was more "apples of the Earth", n'est-ce pas?

In a lot of languages the word for apple used to refer to all kinds of fruits, particularly new ones from more or less exotic lands. Pineapples also don't look much like apples, do they?

Have a look at how some early apple varieties looked like, before they were cultivated:

https://birdsongorchards.com/pages/welcome-to-wondrous-diversity-of-heirloom-apples

good tasting apples are a relatively recent thing. They are one of the fruits where a good tasting one is rare and then has to propagated with grafts. Apples that grow from seed are not that great and before a certain point was mainly turned into cider and vinegar and such.

Wait until you hear about pomegranates.

if you think ground apples isn't an apt description, you've never eaten potatoes raw.