Pomegranate late 16th century and into California by Spanish settlers in 1769. Today, it is widely cultivated throughout the Middle East and Caucasus region, north and tropical Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, the drier parts of southeast Asia, and parts of the Mediterranean Basin. It is also cultivated in parts of Arizona and California. In the 20th and 21st centuries, it has become more common in the shops and markets of Europe and the Western Hemisphere. The name pomegranate derives from medieval Latin "pōmum" "apple" and "grānātum" "seeded". Possibly stemming from the old French word for the fruit, "pomme-grenade", the pomegranate
Medieval Latin increasingly influenced by Vulgar Latin, which was mutating into the Romance languages. Many striking differences between classical and medieval Latin are found in orthography. Perhaps the most striking difference is that medieval manuscripts used a wide range of abbreviations by means of superscripts, special characters etc.: for instance the letters "n" and "s" were often omitted and replaced by a diacritical mark above the preceding or following letter. Apart from this, some of the most frequently occurring differences are as follows. Clearly many of these would have been influenced by the spelling, and indeed pronunciation, of the vernacular language, and