"Το πεπόνι."

Translation: The melon.

[JiHoonLee11]

Fun fact: Peponi in Swahili means paradise :)

[Theo_Matrakas]

Haha thanks for sharing it with us :D

[MarksAaron]

Believe it or not, this is related to the "pump-" in "pumpkin".
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pumpkin#Etymology

[ThomasFAustria]

Thanks for this hint

[daherkurt]

well its kinda like pepino in spanish (cucumber) which also grows like that ;)

[AlexPedrotti]

In Portuguese, pepino comes from Latin pepo and Greek πέπων!

[Snommelp]

...welp, it had to happen eventually. Got it wrong because I forgot to change back from the Greek keyboard.

[jaye16]

Yes, I do it too.

[coolcoo1]

Now i see why in bulgarian it's sometimes called "pipon"

[HiMeCriss]

Πεπόνι sounds like Pepene in Romanian, which means melon as well. I think it's a loanword <3

[BradFlores]

Indeed. And a regional Romanian word for 'watermelon' is 'harbuz' which sounds just like the Greek 'καρπουζι'. Scholars say it comes from Ukrainian, Russian or Turkish, but it's very unlikely since we find it in Greek.

[troll1995]

Greeks took it (=the word καρπούζι) from Turkish, that's for sure. In "pure Greek" it's υδροπέπων (and no one uses it)

[HastaLaVista83]

"Watermelon" in Russian is "арбуз (arbuz)".

[Michael747273]

How do you remember it's πεπόνι and not πεπόνη? What's the difference?

[troll1995]

If it were πεπόνη, it would be a feminine noun, so it would be η πεπόνη. Feminine nouns tend to end in -η. Neuter nouns in -ι. So, it is good to remember the nouns with their article and try to memorize gender endings. If you find that being too much, you will just have to memorize it the way it is, unfortunately. There is no difference in pronounciation or something.

You can see noun endings here

[JohnBacas]

I grew up remembering it as μελόνι. Was that an "borrowed" version?

[jaye16]

Sounds like my grandmother who combined similar sounding Greek and English words into one.