The sweet potato is not closely related to the common potato, but they both share the same name origin. The first Europeans to taste sweet potatoes were members of Christopher Columbus's expedition in 1492. There were local names for different cultivars for the sweet potato. However, the part of the name that remained was the indigenous Taino name of the potato, "batata". The Spanish combined the word "batata" with the Quechua word for potato, "papa", to create the word "patata" for the common potato.