The spread of the word for “tea”

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The etymology of the different words for tea reveals the history of the spread of tea-drinking culture and trade from China to countries worldwide. Almost all the words for tea worldwide fall into three broad groups: ‘te,’ ‘cha,’ and ‘chai,’ present in English as tea, ‘cha’ or ‘char,’ and ‘chai.’

The earliest of the three to enter English is ‘cha,’ which came in the 1590s via the Portuguese, who traded in Macao and picked up the Cantonese pronunciation of the word.

The more familiar tea form came in the 17th century via the Dutch, who gained it indirectly from the Malay ‘teh’ or directly from the ‘tê’ pronunciation in Min Chinese. The third form, ‘chai’ (meaning “spiced tea”), derived from a northern Chinese pronunciation of ‘cha,’ which traveled overland to Central Asia and Persia, where it picked up a Persian ending ‘yi,’ and entered English via Hindustani in the 20th century.

The various regional pronunciations of the word in China are acknowledged to have originated from the same root, which diverged due to sound changes through the centuries. The word’s written form in Chinese, ‘茶’ was formed in the mid-Tang dynasty by altering the character ‘荼’ (pronounced ‘tu’), which meant “bitter vegetable.” ‘Tu’ was used to referring to various plants in ancient China and gained the additional meaning of “tea” by the Han dynasty.

The Chinese word for ‘tea’ probably emanated from the non-Sinitic languages of the botanical motherland of the tea plant in southwest China or Burma, possibly from an archaic Austro-Asiatic root word *la, denoting “leaf.”

The word “Tea” spread by sea, and word “Cha” by land.