Back to its roots

Now we know more about how the loempia is made, we must also talk about the etymology of the word. Where does the word loempia come from? To understand this, we must look back to Dutch history.

The word Loempia entered the Dutch language via its former colony in Indonesia, the former Dutch East Indies. [Hayes 2017] In English, Loempia’s are known as spring rolls, which is a literal translation of the Chinese chunjuan 春卷. The Loempia came to Indonesia through the arrival of Southern Chinese traders. Chinese traders were already present in Indonesia when the Dutch Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) arrived in the 17th century.[Thiook-Liem 2017] Many words were adopted from the Fujian province, since the Fujianese were some of the earliest Chinese migrants and traders in Southeast Asia.[Hayes 2017] The bulk of these Fujianese traders spoke Hokkien, a variant of Chinese. The name in Bahasa Indonesian, lumpia, is derived from the Hokkien word for spring rolls, lun-pia 润饼. The Dutch language adopted the old Indonesian spelling of this word, spelled loempia.

The etymology of the word already shows how far the dish has travelled, since it contains traces of both Malay and Chinese languages. Contemporary loempia’s can take on multiple sizes and vary in fillings. Let us turn to these now.