There is something curious in the etymology of the words “apricot,” “peach,” and “nectarine,” and in their equivalents in several languages, which may amuse your readers.

The apricot is an Armenian or Persian fruit, and was known to the Romans later than the peach.  It is spoken of by Pliny and by Martial.

Plin.  N.H., lib. xv. c. 12.: 

    “Post autumnum maturescunt Persica, aestate praecocia, intra xxx annos
    reperta.”

Martial, lib. xiii.  Epig. 46.: 

  “Vilia maternis fueramus praecoqua ramis,
    Nunc in adaptivis Persica care sumus.”

Its only name was given from its ripening earlier than the peach.

The words used in Galen for the same fruit (evidently Graecised Latin), are [Greek:  prokokkia] and [Greek:  prekokkia].  Elsewhere he says of this fruit, [Greek:  tautes ekleleiphthai to palaion onoma].  Dioscorides, with a nearer approach to the Latin, calls apricots [Greek:  praikokia.]

From praecox, though not immediately, apricot seems to be derived.

Johnson, unable to account for the initial a, derives it from apricus.  The American lexicographer Webster gives, strangely enough albus coccus as its derivation.

The progress of the word from west to east, and then from east to south-west, and from thence northwards, and its various changes in that progress, are rather strange.

One would have supposed that the Arabs, living near the region of which the fruit was a native, might have either had a name of their own for it, or at least have borrowed one from Armenia.  But they apparently adopted a slight variation of the Latin, [Greek:  to palaion onoma], as Galen says, [Greek:  exeleleipto].

The Arabs called it [Arabic:  brqwq] or, with the article, [Arabic:  albrqwq].

The Spaniards must have had the fruit in Martial’s time, but they do not take the name immediately from the Latin, but through the Arabic, and call it albaricoque.  The Italians, again, copy the Spanish, not the Latin, and call it albicocco.  The French, from them, have abricot.  The English, though they take their word from the French, at first called it abricock, then apricock (restoring the p), and lastly, with the French termination, apricot.

From malum persicum was derived the German Pfirsiche, and Pfirsche, whence come the French peche, and our peach.  But in this instance also, the Spaniards follow the Arabic [Arabic:  bryshan], or, with the article [Arabic:  albryshan], in their word alberchigo.  The Arabic seems to be derived from the Latin, and the Persians, though the fruit was their own, give it the same name.

Johnson says that nectarine is French, but gives no authority.  It certainly is unknown to the French, who call the fruit either peche lisse, or brugnon.  The Germans also call it glatte Pfirsche.