cshenk wrote:

> Jean B. wrote:
>> *It seems to me that the older cookbooks spelled it "azuki", although
>> now adzuki seems to have taken over.
>>
>> I actually used some beans from VERY old cans of sweetened beans,
>> which date back to my daughter's school days. In the ginger milk
>> context, it didn't make much difference, although I am sure the whole
>> thing would have been even better with fresher beans, be they canned
>> or homemade.
>
> No problem! And yes, both spellings work. It seems to be changing and
> not sure which is more 'classic'. It seems based in a 'tomato, tomAtow'
> pronounciation difference best i could tell.
>
> If it helps, when Japanese say it, there is a faint 'd' in there.
>

Oh, interesting. Finally a use for ngrams. The use of adzuki remained
somewhat higher than the use of azuki until ca 1934, when the use of
azuki spiked. "Azuki" remained the dominant spelling through the 40s but
started plummeting ca 1942. By 1945, use of "azuki" was slightly higher
than that of "adzuki", and that was the case until the use of "azuki"
rocketed up again ca 1987. But "azuki" took a nosedive in 1993, and the
steady rise of the use of adzuki bean caught up with it in 1995.
"Adzuki" has kept its edge since then.

Being a child of the 60s, and perhaps first encountering the spelling in
macrobiotic cookbooks (no, I wasn't into macrobiotics, per se) back
then, the "azuki" spelling stuck.