If you cook rice (or sometimes other grains) with various other tasty things, depending on what language you speak you might call it pilaf, pilau, pulao, pelau, plov, fulao, paloo, plovas, or paella.

All of these originate from a Tamil word for “cooked rice” that got into Sanskrit, then Persian, then Turkish … then everywhere.

The was a really interesting Chefs Table (Netflix show) episode about a Turkish chef. He went on about how the same dish has a million different names all depending on the region you’re from. I think it was season 4.