Background: an unusual origin...
Linguistic information suggests that Aztecs in Mexico and Incas in Peru were the first to grow  tomatoes.

The word tomate, which was first introduced in the Castiglian language in 1532 and then in French, in English (tomato) as well as in many Italian dialects (tomato is used in the Piemonte region dialect, while tomata and tomatiga are used in Sardinia) derives from a mistake because the word tòmatl (from which it comes) in Nàhuatl, the language of the Aztech Indios, used to indicate all kind of plants with round pulpy seedy fruits. They also used a word that meant precisely “tomato”: xitòmatl (which was probably confused by the European conquistadores) and which is still used in some regions of Mexico through the word jitomate.

The word pomodoro (the Italian for tomato), instead, has a more recent origin, and was introduced by Pier Andrea Mattioli (1501-1577), the father of Italian botany. Mattioli used the term mala aurea in his treatise “Medici Senensis Commentarii”; mala aurea was translated into the Italian “pomodoro”.

But Mattioli was not the only diffuser of this word: the Neapolitan term li pummaroli has a French origin: it was introduced in 1799 when the transalpine army called these fruits pomme d’or or pomme d’amour, referring to the aphrodisiac qualities  that were attributed to the tomato in the XVII and XVIII centuries. This also explains expressions such as love apple, Liebesapfel and pumu d’amuri that were used in England, Germany and Sicily respectively.