Maya Nut is a name I chose for the seed of Brosimum alicastrum.  There were already a lot of indigenous names for it, but they all seemed too challenging for our target market (United States, Canada) to pronounce and remember.  Maya Nut is native 2 places where English is the main spoken language (Jamaica, Belize). The common name for it in Jamaica is Breadnut and in Belize it’s Ramón. Neither of those names seemed interesting to me, so I named it Maya Nut.

This is a list of the known indigenous names for Maya Nut. There are probably many more that we don’t know yet:

Because Maya Nut was so important as food for so many different indigenous groups and mestizo communities, it is a common placename. These include many places called “Ojochal” in Costa Rica, “El Capomo” in Nayarit, Mexico, “Guaimaro” in Cuba, “Ujuxtal” and “ Iximchè” in Guatemala, “El Ramonal” in Guatemala, “Breadnut Hill”, “Breadnut Valley” and “Breadnut Island” in Jamaica, “El Mastatal”, “El Ojoche” y “Ojochal” in Costa Rica, “La Congona” in Peru and many many more. Interestingly, there is a town in Cuba called “Guaimaro”, which is the common name for Maya Nut in Colombia. This makes me wonder if precolombian Colombians carried Maya Nut (Guaimaro) to Cuba a long time ago….