Q1.
When people from Persia came to India and saw that a common tree of their country was freely growing here, they started calling the tree Azad Darakhte Hindi. So, the scientific name of Neem in Latin became Azadirachta indica. Neem has different names in the Indian languages. Discuss with your teacher and find out which Indian languages these names belong to. (Nimb, Nim, Leemba, Nimori, Nimbamond, Nimbe, Nimo)
Answer
Only one of these is settled by the lesson itself — Neem Baba says, “in Hindi, my name is Nimb.” For the rest, this is a find-out activity: ask your language teacher, your grandparents, or a classmate whose mother tongue is different from yours, and fill the table with what you learn.
| Name | Language it is commonly said to belong to |
|---|---|
| Nimb | Hindi — stated in the lesson |
| Nim | Bengali (also heard in Assamese, Odia, Punjabi and Urdu) |
| Leemba | Marathi (limba) / Gujarati (limbdo) |
| Nimori | Marathi — nimori / nimboli is also the word for the neem fruit |
| Nimbamond | A southern form; usually given as Kannada |
| Nimbe | Kannada |
| Nimo | Gujarati / Kutchi |
Check with your teacher: the textbook does not print the answers, and different books match these names to different languages. Treat the last four rows as a starting point for your discussion, not as a fixed answer — and add the name of neem in your mother tongue to the table.
Notice the family likeness: Nimb, Nim, Nimori, Nimbamond, Nimbe, Nimo — almost every Indian name grows out of the same Sanskrit root Nimba. The Persians heard that word, called the tree Azad Darakhte Hindi (‘the free tree of India’), and from that phrase scientists made the Latin name Azadirachta indica.