Coconut story part I - coconut and clock in Thailand

I happened to have a chance to taste the new daily product, the coconut water flavor in the previous days. The odor of fresh coconut, combines with the sweet & oily taste of cow milk is quite a good match. Overall, it taste good and worth my spent money.

In Thai language, the world means clock (na-li-ka) has a strong relationship with the coconut. However, I should start with a brief description of coconut.

Coconut or Cocos nucifera is a plant in Araceceae family (the palm tree family). The consumable parts are the flesh and the water, which is indeed the endosperm – a part of the seeds. The real coconut “fruit” is the husk and the hard shell surrounded the “flesh” and “water”. 

Coconut fruits, Taling Chan District, Bangkok

In the southern India, coconut is called in Tegulu as “nalike”. This name was given to both the coconut itself and the island located in Southern India, where numerous coconut trees are grown. The legend says that the native people of this island ate coconut as the main ingredient of their diet. 

Then what is the relationship between coconut and clock in Thailand? In the past, Thai people use the hard shell of coconut (called “Kala” in Thai) for many purposes, including for time count. They were placed the pored coconut shell in the container filled with water and wait until the shell was sunken into the bottom of the container and set as one cycle of the time count. They named this time count as “one Nalike” after the name of coconut in Tegulu. When the mechanical clock firstly arrives in Thailand, Thai people given the name Nalike to the clock, as a symbol informed that this is the tool to tell time. Time past and the name was chance, for easier pronounce, as “nalika”. Nowadays, the word nalika is officially used in Thailand as the clock. 

So the Thai word for clock is originally derived from the name of the coconut in Tegulu.