People are only now realising that kiwis originally had a completely different name.

A kiwi is a fruit well known for its fuzzy brown skin and juicy, sweet/sour green flesh with tiny black seeds. However, many people don’t know that it was called something else entirely before the Cold War.

A TikTok user, based in London, who posts gardening content shared a video on the platform discussing kiwi’s original name while showing her own kiwi tree. The 34-year-old home gardener asked: “Did you know that kiwis are only called kiwis cause the Brits couldn’t handle its real name?”

She then walked over to her kiwi tree and shared that it has never grown any fruit and it has never flowered. The content creator suspects this is because the climate in London is “just not conducive to kiwi.”

She added: “Luckily, we don’t have to grow our own kiwi in the UK because we import over 30 million KGs (kilograms) of the stuff from New Zealand every year. But that was not always the case because in 1959 these were called Chinese gooseberries.”

The gardening and history fan explained that during the peak of the Cold War “anything with Chinese associations drew negative and harsh reactions from western markets”. This meant that trying to sell a fruit with a ‘Chinese name’ was a “nightmare for New Zealand exporters.”

This supposedly led to one exporter called Turners and Growers getting the idea of calling the fruit after New Zealand’s native bird kiwi, due to their similarities as they are both small, brown and fuzzy. The TikTok user concluded her video: “And just like that in 1959 the kiwi fruit hit the supermarket without all that political baggage and it was a hit.”

And it turns out many had no idea the kiwi fruit originally had a different name. “I thought they were called Kiwis because they looked like the body of a kiwi bird,” said one person. “This is really interesting, my mum always called them Chinese gooseberries I thought it was just one of her quirks,” commented another.

And a third wrote: “Interesting. If I had to guess I would have assumed it was because the kiwi bird fed off them.”

The Cold War was an ongoing political rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies that developed in 1947 after World War II. It lasted until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

New Zealand History, on its website, explains that kiwi seeds were brought to New Zealand in 1904 by Mary Isabel Fraser, the principal of Wanganui Girls’ College, who had been visiting mission schools in China. A Whanganui nurseryman, Alexander Allison, planted the seeds and the vines first fruited in 1910.

People thought the fruit had a gooseberry flavour so began calling it the Chinese gooseberry. The website adds: “New Zealand began exporting the fruit to the US in the 1950s. This was the height of the Cold War and the term Chinese gooseberry was a marketing nightmare for Turners and Growers.

“Their first idea, ‘melonettes’, was equally unpopular with US importers because melons and berries were subject to high import tariffs. In June 1959, Jack Turner suggested the name kiwifruit during a Turners and Growers management meeting in Auckland. His idea was adopted and this later became the industry-wide name.”