Kiwifruit industry in New Zealand and Growers, who were calling the berries "melonettes", because the local name for the fruit, "Chinese gooseberry", had political connotations due to the Cold War, and to further distinguish it from real gooseberries, which are prone to a fungus called anthracnose. An American importer, Norman Sondag of San Francisco, complained that "melonettes" was as bad as "Chinese gooseberry" because melons and berries were both subject to high import tariffs, and instead asked for a short Maori name that quickly connoted New Zealand. In June 1959, during a meeting of Turners and Growers management in Auckland, Jack Turner suggested the name
Gooseberry "kruisbes" or the allied German "Krausbeere", or of the earlier forms of the French "groseille". Alternatively, the word has been connected to the Middle High German krus (curl, crisped), in Latin as "grossularia". However, the "Oxford English Dictionary" takes the obvious derivation from "goose" and "berry" as probable because "the grounds on which plants and fruits have received names associating them with animals are so often inexplicable that the inappropriateness in the meaning does not necessarily give good grounds for believing that the word is an etymological corruption". The French for gooseberry is "groseille à maquereau", translated as "mackerel berries",