Cacao and chocolate both come from Nahuatl words (cacaua and xocolatl, respectively, though note that there was also a drink called cacahuaatl: “atl” = water).
According to Wiktionary the xocolatl case is actually a bit uncertain (not much evidence of that word in use before 1750), and there are some competing theories that it was maybe related to the word for a stirring stick, or maybe descended from the Yucatec Maya word chocol (hot). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chocolate
The version I like is the Maya version from the south of Mexico, now called tascalate (not sure what the Maya name was, or exactly what the etymology is there – the “ate” part comes from the same Nahuatl word for water).
But that’s all sort of beside the point that the word chocolate (and cacao) are fairly recent words, which were spread rapidly around the world mostly from one source, so the name was adopted pretty much everywhere as a loanword, and doesn’t change too much between languages.
Yeah, but it was a loan word in Nahuatl too. I was sure the original domestication was mayan, but wikipedia tells me that the original word comes from mixe-zoque (so plausibly Olmec).
According to Wiktionary the xocolatl case is actually a bit uncertain (not much evidence of that word in use before 1750), and there are some competing theories that it was maybe related to the word for a stirring stick, or maybe descended from the Yucatec Maya word chocol (hot). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chocolate
The version I like is the Maya version from the south of Mexico, now called tascalate (not sure what the Maya name was, or exactly what the etymology is there – the “ate” part comes from the same Nahuatl word for water).
But that’s all sort of beside the point that the word chocolate (and cacao) are fairly recent words, which were spread rapidly around the world mostly from one source, so the name was adopted pretty much everywhere as a loanword, and doesn’t change too much between languages.