Eggs are oval. The word ‘egg’ is even etymologically related to ‘oval’.

‘Oval’ comes from Latin ‘ōvālis’ (egg-shaped), a derivative of ‘ōvum’ (egg), the ancestor of Spanish ‘huevo’, French ‘œuf’ and others.

Latin ‘ōvum’, in turn, was a distant cousin of Germanic *ajjan, the ancestor of Old Norse ‘egg’. This word was borrowed into Middle English and gradually displaced the native word ‘ey’.

Click my new infographic graphic to learn more.

See post 2 for an anecdote on ‘eggs’ and ‘eyren’.

@yvanspijk Proto-Germanic is in there twice – with two slightly different eggs.
@proedie Yes, in the west, people changed its endings, perhaps because a good number of other farm words had these endings.
@yvanspijk I showed this to my girlfriend and she pointed out that the Polish word for egg is jajko, not jajo. Is that not modern Polish or did you forget the k?
@yvanspijk Oh, never mind. There are two words for egg in Polish. The one you eat is jajko, while the egg in general is jajo. Like beef and cow, I guess.