There is, however, behind this, some notion (exemplified in the quotation from Lane’s Mod. And it would seem that the old Arab medical writers give it a bad character as an article of diet. from Pg., illustrates the Anglo-Indian form… In the West Indies brinjalle has been further corrupted to brown-jolly.” The Yiddish word is patlezhán; perhaps one of my Yiddish-scholar readers can tell me what the immediate source is, but it’s clearly in this group. You can see still more eggplant words (of all origins) here.