The Difference
Sweet potato and yams have nothing alike. A sweet potato is the orange-fleshed potato you see in the supermarkets. The orange kinds are most common today but they can also be of purple color and originally all sweet potatoes had white or yellowish flesh. And a yam is of brown-covered and white on the inside. And you would only find it in a specialty store in the United States. More than 90% of yams are grown in West Africa, where they’ve been a staple food for thousands of years.
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So if these are completely different vegetables, why do the grocery stores label them as the same? The name yam came about in the US in the 1920s. Louisiana farmers advertised their most orange sweet potatoes as ‘yams’ to try to stand out from the other sweet potatoes. But they don’t come up with that word out of nowhere. It was already being used for sweet potatoes in the 19th century.
The Origin
So where did it actually come from? One clue is here. The word ‘yam’ was probably derived from these West African words and what could be most obvious way that African words could travel to the Southern US? Slavery is the answer. So when West African people were forced into slavery in the new world, they probably used the word to refer to the root vegetable that they found there, the sweet potato.
Transcripted By Benazir Elahee Munni