A FOR APPLE OR A FOR AMROOD

There is a common misconception in India that, Apple is an American fruit while guava is India's fruit, so instead of A for Apple, one should say A for Amrood,

But people don't know that Apple is not American fruit, but Guava is American fruit, while apple is a fruit from Central Asia. Despite the deep association of "as American as apple pie," cultivated Apples are not native to North America, whereas Guavas originate directly from tropical America.

The domesticated Apple (Malus domestica) evolved from Malus sieversii, a wild apple species native to the Tian Shan mountain range of Central Asia (primarily present-day southeastern Kazakhstan and parts of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and western China).

Guavas are indigenous to Tropical America—stretching across Mexico, Central America, northern South America, and the Caribbean. Portuguese and Spanish explorers encountered the fruit in the Americas during the 16th century and spread it across the globe and to India.

The word guava originates from indigenous Central American languages. The Taíno people (an Indigenous Arawak community of the Caribbean) called the tree guayabo.

Taíno (Arawak) Spanish English
"Guayabo" ───> "Guayaba" ───> "Guava"
(the tree) (the fruit) (mid-16th century)

The word Amrood (अमरूद) is a classic case of botanical mix-up and linguistic borrowing. In Classical Persian, the word amrūd (امرود) did not mean guava—it meant pear! (In fact, in modern Turkish, the derivative armut still means pear).

When Portuguese traders brought the new, foreign guava fruit to India in the 16th–17th centuries, local populations and Persian-speaking Mughal courtiers noticed that this novel tropical fruit had a gritty texture, dense flesh, and a shape vaguely similar to the Central Asian pear (amrūd).

Over time, the name for the pear (amrūd) was transferred entirely to the newly imported guava. Meanwhile, to distinguish actual pears, Northern languages began referring to pears as nashpati (नाश्पाती) or amritphal.

In Bengali it is called Peyara (পেয়ারা) borrowed from the Portuguese word for pear, pera.
Marathi / Konkani it is called Peru (पेरू) a direct reference to South America, specifically named after the country Peru.
Tamil/Telugu it is called Koyya/Goyva a phonetic adaptation of the original Spanish/Arawak Guayaba.

Originally, in Persian agricultural terminology, nāshpātī was a descriptive term for smooth-leaved pear varieties (as opposed to hardier, wild spiky shrubs). When amrūd became associated with guava across the Mughal courts, nāshpātī was adopted as the official word for the pear to prevent confusion at the fruit markets. Amritphal is a direct adaptation of "amrud" + "phal" = Amrud fruit