Bintje

Meaning

Noun

• A kind of potato produced in the Netherlands.

Origin

• From a Dutch-style diminutive of the name Ben, a nickname of the given name Benedictus. The potato was first produced in 1904 by Kornelis Lieuwes de Vries, a Frisian schoolmaster, and named after one of his pupils, a young woman named Bintsje Jansma (spelled with the Frisian diminutive suffix -tsje). (It was common practice in the Netherlands to use a diminutive form of male nicknames for women.)