Scallion comes from Anglo-Norman scalun, from Vulgar Latin *escalonia, from Latin (caepa) Ascalonia ('onion of Ascalon'), named after the Philistine port of Ascalon. The historical chain includes Latin Ascalonia. The quoted older sense, "onion of Ascalon," supplies the immediate semantic anchor for scallion. The formation is best read as borrowed: the word scallion carries its older form-history into a compact English lexical shape. In present English it is used as a noun, "a long-stalked onion with a small bulb; a spring onion". Related English forms include shallot and scallop. The result is a noun whose etymology preserves both the older form and the later English specialization.