Today marks 64 years since New Zealand re-branded the Chinese gooseberry as kiwifruit. The first kiwifruit seeds were brought to New Zealand in 1904 by the principal of Wanganui Girls' College, Mary Fraser, who had been on a trip to China. In the 1950s, New Zealand began exporting the fruit to the US, but with the Cold War raging, something called ‘Chinese gooseberry’ was a tough product to sell US importers and consumers.
That is why NZ produce company, Turners and Growers, chose a change. They originally wanted to call the fruit "melonettes", but that didn’t really stick. So from June 15, 1959, Turners and Growers began calling them kiwifruit. In 1988, the New Zealand Kiwifruit Marketing Board (now called Zespri) was established to distinguish NZ kiwifruit from others.
Source: 1news.co.nz