The city name Damascus is very ancient and not Arabic. The damson plum – earlier called also the damask plum and damascene plum – has a word-history in Latin that goes back to the era when Damascus was part of the Roman empire and so it is not from Arabic. On the other hand, the damask fabric and the damask rose emerged in the Western European languages when Damascus was an Arabic-speaking city; and apparently at emergence they referred to goods originally sold from or made in Arabic Damascus.[32]