Christopher Columbus, believing he had reached India, called the vegetable "Indian wheat." The old French name for corn, "blé d'Inde," is still sometimes used in Québec..

In Atlantic Europe, corn was sometimes called "Spanish wheat," since it was the Spanish who brought corn back from their exploration of the Americas and began cultivating it in Spain.

Champlain gave the nickname "mingan" to corn in 1616, and the word came to refer to the area where he landed on the north shore of the St. Lawrence river.

During the reign of the Turkomans in Persia, corn was often known as "Turkish wheat."

The cultivation of corn goes back more over three thousand years. To the Iroquois, the corn goddess was one of the three divinities of agriculture and gardens, along with those who oversaw squash and beans.

Used sometimes as food, sometimes as currency, corn was a part of daily life:

• the silk that came from the ears was smoked to create a kind of fuel
• the kernels were threaded together to make necklaces and other jewellery
• the germ was turned into oil or cooking fat
• leaves were used to stuff mattresses and to make dolls, moccasins and ritual masks;
• the Iroquois believed that eternal hunting grounds awaited them after death and so they buried their dead with jars of corn and wild rice to sustain them during their long voyage.
• last but not least, the kernels can be made into alcohol. Native Americans were the first to discover the effects of fermented corn mash, and the Americans later simply refined the original recipe to create a corn spirit which they called bourbon.

Though corn is widely grown in the north, it is also found in South America. In fact, when the first French ships docked at Callao and Lima in the 18th century, the natives offered the sailors "chica," a spirit made from fermented corn and pineapple juice. Corn is still used in the production of beer and gin.

Mexico
In Aztec times, corn was the child of the sun, its kernels a gift from the day star who benevolently rained down a shower of corn upon the earth to provide man's daily sustenance.

Canada
Grown near their dwellings, corn was an integral part of the social and religious life of the Iroquois and Huron tribes. Just before the spring corn planting, the fields were blessed to ensure an abundant harvest. Tradition demanded that a young girl and her family take part in this ancient ceremony.

From their earliest arrival, colonists in Canada understood corn's importance and learned how to grow it, though in the United States efforts to raise corn were half-hearted until the 19th century. It was only after the Civil War that corn production was pursued more intensively.

Ivory Coast
Even today, in the eastern part of the Ivory Coast, the annual corn festival held each July is an event that brings together the entire population in Yezimala (Bondoukou). Here corn is made into a paste called "aitiu" and formed into balls about the size of a medium orange, which are sold throughout the country.

France
Corn has been a staple of Basque cooking since 1523. Though it may have been Columbus who first brought corn to France, it is Gonzalo de Percazteguy d'Hernani to whom we owe this minor revolution in Basque cooking. This cereal grain was turned into:

• Méture - corn bread
• Taloa - corn cake

During this period, corn played such an important role that it became a central part of major events like Zuberoa, during which a costumed dancer on a white horse represented Zamari Churia, the corn spirit.