Talk:Halloumi

Halloumi A cheese dedicated to Venus (Aphrodite)

The main subject of the origin of halloumi is the shape of the originial Halloumi.

The original shape is the shape of the female genetical and sexual organs (vegina) and is dedicated to The Goddess of Love Aphrodite. As for the name the world Halloumi is not a Greek word but we have to separate ancient Cyprus language from the Greek. The Cypriots that time were very closed in customs and religions with the today Syria and south Turkey since they were Finix. Venus was also a goddess of Finix as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tyflix (talk • contribs) 09:09, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

External links modified

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External links modified

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Turkish name of Halloumi

I believe that the turkish name of Halloumi should appear in the lede- first sentence. As far as I know, all documents cite Cyprus as the place of origin. The Republic of Cyprus, a bi-communal state, has two official languages, greek and turkish. Cinadon36 (talk) 14:05, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

The common name in English is halloumi or haloumi; neither "challoumi" nor "hellim" are recognized English words, per Oxford English Dictionary, other dictionaries and reliable sources, and Google Books search. Foreign-language equivalents may be listed if the subject is "closely associated" with the language, but should not be bolded, per MOS:FORLANG. Halloumi is also closely associated with Arab countries of the Levant, and with Cypriot Arabic, which was a common language in the past and the basis of the name. Prior to extensive edit warring starting in late 2015, the article had the English name in bold, followed by Greek, Turkish, and Arabic equivalents, which was fairly stable going back more than ten years. MOS:FORLANG specifies only one foreign equivalent should be used, but in practice there are often more than one - I support having all three, or none at all. Emphasizing or excluding one is not in line with WP:NPOV.

Like most foods it's likely a product of an evolutionary process in the greater region, where migration was common, with no identifiable, single point of origin. Assigning it a modern-day ethnic identity is historically inaccurate. Whatever its ultimate origin is though, it doesn't seem to be related to traditional mainland Greek or Turkish cuisine, so labelling it as one or the other is doubly misleading. --IamNotU (talk) 17:55, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

IamNotU, you 've convinced me.Cinadon36 (talk) 18:33, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Just to drive the point home, not necessarily for you but so we have something to point to for all the people who keep adding "hellim" back in, here's a Google search, restricted to English-language results, for hellim -halloumi -peynir -peyniri -peynirli -"hell im" -warcraft -thraw -helm.

• I excluded "halloumi" so as not to count pages not referring matter-of-factly to the cheese as "hellim" but where the name of the cheese is itself a focus of discussion, in which case it's likely that "hellim" is being given as the Turkish name for the cheese, not as the English name.
• I excluded several derived forms of "peynir", Turkish for "cheese", because sources containing them are likely discussing Turkish terminology overall (because no one is going to argue that "peynir" is an alternative term for "cheese" in English), in which case, again, it's likely that the mention of "hellim" is to point it out as the Turkish name for the cheese.
• I excluded "hell im" because Google helpfully tries to make up for possible typos in one's search string, and was returning hits with the consecutive strings "hell" and "im".
• I excluded "warcraft" because some hits were discussing a character or place, I forget which, named "Hellim" in World of Warcraft.
• I excluded "thraw" and "helm" because several pages containing "hellim" explained that it's a Scots spelling for "helm" or "rudder", and because some were quoting a passage from Robert Burns containing the phrase "hellim thraw", using the word in that nautical sense.

What was left: 121 hits, total. Many of those uses are in names of businesses ("Hellim Cheese Factory", "Hellim Cafe & Restaurant"), from Turkish restaurant menus or reviews by people who were getting the word from Turkish restaurant menus. There just isn't a lot of evidence that "hellim" is used in English in a natural way to refer to the cheese with any appreciable frequency.

Also, check out the relative usage of the words in Google's English book corpus. Interestingly "halloumi" runs neck-and-neck with "haloumi". Largoplazo (talk) 20:41, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

@IamNotU: Sorry about that reversion, I thought your edit was a reversion of mine. Largoplazo (talk) 02:45, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

However, anything beyond the etymology may still be out of place because WP:NOTDICTIONARY. It isn't Wikipedia's role to tell people what names they'll find things listed under if they visit other countries where they're available. Wiktionary takes care of that. Largoplazo (talk) 02:48, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Not a problem, and you are quite correct. I don't think it's inappropriate though to mention the "hellim" name in the body of the article when relevant. There's potential to expand the article to cover the situation in Europe, and particularly the dispute over the trademark of "hellim" by the Gazi company in Germany and the application to the EU for PDO that covers both halloumi/hellim, and so on. In terms of etymology, I'm still considering how to better emphasize that the origin/history of the name is not necessarily the same as that of the food... --IamNotU (talk) 03:29, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Infobox origin

I've changed the "country of origin" field in the infobox to "Eastern Mediterranean", since having a specific country name is contradicted by the "History" section and its citations of a variety of reliable, independent, scholarly sources that say it is not possible to determine with any accuracy. IP user 2a02:c7f:be21:5a00:1443:8977:edf8:cf9a (talk), I have reverted your change of it twice, and copied the citations to the infobox. If you wish to make the edit, please discuss it here and provide an explanation based on more-reliable sources. Please note that there are many sources that will say halloumi is a "Cypriot cheese", but in order to state it's actual historical origin, we need to rely on high-quality scholarly historical sources, published by notable academic/science publishers. --IamNotU (talk) 00:15, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Production?

Well, how is this cheese made? Savvyjack23 (talk) 19:48, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Bibliography

Hello. For a class, I am posting a few new sources that I found related to this article. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1471-0307.1998.tb02646.x?casa_token=9l6AulREIB0AAAAA:epPhXYfQhm7zY9bq8Krngo4B43IlFxVjlS2nmPkeCeivYkcA4lvqOg1UbZNn81rzkvPIU68HBP3rxS2W https://aspace.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/324396/ARC_35-2_Laoutari.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Matzahballsoup (talk) 05:40, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Food in the Islamic Middle East

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation–supported course assignment, between 13 January 2022 and 25 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Matzahballsoup (article contribs). Peer reviewers: GDC0605.

Wiki Education assignment: Food in the Islamic Middle East

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation–supported course assignment, between 12 January 2023 and 24 April 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Egguser44 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by IamBookcat (talk) 01:22, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Origin and 1st source

The first sentence says that it originates from Cyprus and leaves us with a source for that. However, the source just says, that the EU now marks Halloumi sold in the EU as a Cypriot product. Notwithstanding the history of it and that it first appeared in Cyprus when it already had a coptic name, makes the source very doubtful and the sentence biased. 176.236.21.119 (talk) 09:17, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Production quantity overstated by 10x?

The Cypriot publication InBusiness appears to report annual production at 45,000 tons. The current Wikipedia article says 450,000 tons, citing some no-name research organization that doesn’t cite its own source. The only reason I hesitate to make the change myself is because I don’t read Greek and better info could be gotten (perhaps) from a Cypriot government website. Anyone wanna take a crack at this? Here’s inbusiness: https://inbusinessnews.reporter.com.cy/article/410855/tyrokomoi-i-dynamiki-toy-challoymioy-se-arithmoys-kai-to-kombiko-exaggko-proion-tis-kyproy SharkJumperNYC (talk) 00:13, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Language with Anti-Capitalist bias

"due to industrial tactics to increase profit, modern halloumi increasingly contains cow's milk"

This is the kind of language that substantiates the reputation of Wikipedia as anything but neutral and unbiased. A neutral causal description for the increasing proportion of cows milk could just as well point to price sensitivity of consumers and/or widespread government subsidies for production of cow milk.

Indeed the referenced source (The Guardian, no less) contains this sentence: "the European dairy industry is based on cow’s milk, the price is lower. But the result is worse. Having said that, I never judge anyone for eating that because they can only access the product they can access."

In other words, even the referenced source doesn't support "due to industrial tactics to increase profit" but instead "due to high cost of goat and sheep's milk as compared to cow's milk and consumers preference for cheap halloumi it increasingly contains cow's milk" or "due to price sensitivity of consumers, modern halloumi increasingly contains cow's milk".

Indeed I think that's not only a more neutral and unbiased, but also a factually better explanation. I could go on a research escapade regarding profit margins in the production processes and supply chain for halloumi, but I'll go out on a limb here and claim that profits in these industries are low compared to other industries, likely in the single digit percent range, which has probably not changed since the glorious time of pure unadulterated and affordable halloumi implied by the current phrasing in the first paragraph of the article.

My bias about the average Wikipedia editor is that they are anti-capitalist and left wing. In their eyes, I'm presumably a right wing chud. I put in 20 minutes of effort to this comment, to see how deep the rot goes and if I should just write wikipedia off as a lost cause. If editors cannot refrain from injecting their ideology into an article about f**king cheese, then what hope is there for any other article? ~2026-46656-92 (talk) 06:08, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

I'm looking at your replacement text. The milk itself doesn't make the decision by virtue of being cheaper, and consumers don't direct the companies to use cows' milk. Companies choose a cheaper raw material because doing so increases their profits, and they choose to follow customer preference because doing so increases their profits. This isn't a political statement and I'm mystified by your implication that pro-capitalists, in contrast to anti-capitalists, deny that companies are motivated by profits. If companies found that consumers sufficiently preferred cheese made from other milks at a higher price that the increased demand would overcome the per-unit profit hit from the higher-priced raw material, then they'd use the higher-priced cheese because that would maximize their profits. Largoplazo (talk) 12:52, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Of course they are motivated by profits, but that's not the question. It's like saying somebody fell because of gravity. Well no shit Sherlock. Why did they fall? Did they trip? Did they not tie their shoelaces properly? Was the ground slippery?

Your description with per-unit profit is exactly right: "if consumers [..] sufficiently preferred cheese made from other milks at a higher price". The critical thing is consumer choice. Producers don't control what people choose to purchase. If you as a producer make halloumi with goats milk or sheep milk, it will be more expensive. If consumers now see too products on the shelf, one is cheaper than the other, do you think they don't assume there's some difference? It's top of mind for most people, which is also why it's the topic of the first paragraph in the article. Apparently people are not scared away by cow's milk, but they are scared away by the higher price. ~2026-46656-92 (talk) 17:44, 27 August 2026 (UTC)