shallot: [17] The shallot is etymologically the onion from ‘Ascalon’, an ancient port in southern Palestine. The Romans called it Ascalōnia caepa ‘Ascalonian onion’, or ascalōnia for short. In Vulgar Latin this became *escalonia, which passed into Old French as escaloigne (source of English scallion [14], still used for ‘spring onion’ in America and elsewhere). The variant form eschalotte developed. English took this over as eschalot (‘Eschalots are now from France become an English plant’, John Mortimer, Whole Art of Husbandry 1707), and soon lopped off the first syllable to produce shallot. => scallion
shallot (n.)
"small onion," 1660s, shortened from eschalot, from French échalote, from Middle French eschalotte, from Old French eschaloigne, from Vulgar Latin *escalonia (see scallion).
