Lumpia is a famous Filipino dish, which obviously is brought to the Philippines by Holo speaking Han Chinese, and pretty much the same thing as the Taiwanese dish lūn-piánn (潤餅 rùnbǐng).
However, the Chinese name itself actually doesn’t make a lot of sense. Lūn (潤) is the action to make something wet, and extends to describe something shiny like it’s coated with gel. It’s not exactly a perfect description for the dish.
Some would say the correct Hanji for lūn should be 荏 (jím) or 輭 (nńg), which is just another way to write 軟 (nńg). All three means soft, which isn’t a bad description of the dish. The issue is they would have to go through a bit of a sound change to be pronounced as lūn.
I was looking over a list of monosyllabic roots in proto-Austronesian, proposed by John Wolff, and I saw this:
*luñ
*luluñ ‘roll up’
*baluñ ‘fold over, wrap’
I went on to look up if the usage exists.
The action of rolling or wrapping in Puyuma is lulun. The action of something like a boulder rolling is kulukulung. In Tagalog, the action of rolling or wrapping seems to be magpagulong, gumulong, pagulungin.
The proto-Austronesian monosyllabic root *lun seems to be present in the form of lun, lung, or long in these examples.
So what if the first syllable for lūn-piánn is actually from Austronesian? In that case lūn-piánn would just literally mean rolled pastry.
Could the name and the dish itself have originated from Austronesian influences and borrowed into Holo, then reborrowed into Austronesian languages like Tagalog?
Sounds great!