>Brewer:
Walnut [foreign nut ]. It comes from Persia, and is so called to distinguish it from those native to Europe, as hazel, filbert, chestnut. (Anglo-Saxon, walh, foreign; hnutu, nut.)


Hey wait a sec. I was raised to believe that hazelnut = filbert, coming from the biggest filbert-producing region in the US. Why the distinction here?