List of English words of Arabic origin (N–S)

The following English words have been acquired either directly from Arabic or else indirectly by passing from Arabic into other languages and then into English. Most entered one or more of the Romance languages before entering English.

To qualify for this list, a word must be reported in etymology dictionaries as having descended from Arabic. A handful of dictionaries has been used as the source for the list. Words associated with the Islamic religion are omitted; for Islamic words, see Glossary of Islam. Archaic and rare words are also omitted. A bigger listing including many words very rarely seen in English is available at Wiktionary dictionary.

Loanwords listed in alphabetical order

 * List of English words of Arabic origin (A-B)
 * List of English words of Arabic origin (C-F)
 * List of English words of Arabic origin (G-J)
 * List of English words of Arabic origin (K-M)
 * List of English words of Arabic origin (N-S)
 * List of English words of Arabic origin (T-Z)
 * List of English words of Arabic origin: Addenda for certain specialist vocabularies

N

 * nadir : نَظِير naẓīr, a point on a celestial sphere diametrically opposite some other point; or a direction to outer space diametrically opposite some other direction. That sense for the wq=nadahir&pg=PA22 ref]. The 10th century text by Al-Battani is in Arabic at AlChamel14.org (also at Archive.org and Al-Hakawati.net), and its 12th century translation by Plato Tiburtinus is at Books.Google.com. The earliest reported secure record for the wordform nadir in the West is dated circa 1233 in the short and influential astronomy textbook De Sphaera Mundi by Johannes de Sacrobosco. Sacrobosco's book was influenced by Arabic astronomy; e.g. it quotes by name the Arabic astronomer Al-Farghani (aka Alfraganus) five times. In the context of talking about how planet Earth blocks sunlight from reaching the Moon during a lunar eclipse, Sacrobosco says in Latin: "The nadir is a point in outer space directly opposite to the sun." That statement by Sacrobosco uses nadir in the sense the Arabic naẓīr was used, which in Arabic had a core meaning of "counterpart". Sacrobosco's De Sphaera is online in Latin and in English translation. Nadir in this original sense was used by Roger Bacon (died 1294) (ref) and Nicholas Oresme (died 1382) (ref), among others. Crossref zenith, which was transferred from Arabic astronomy to Latin astronomy on the same pathway at the same time.


 * natron, natrium, kalium : The ancient Greeks had the word nitron with the meaning of naturally occurring sodium carbonate and similar salts. The medieval Arabs had this spelled نطرون natrūn  with the same meaning. Today's European word natron, meaning hydrated sodium carbonate, is descended from the Arabic.English dictionaries saying "natron" is from Arabic include Merriam-Webster, American Heritage Dictionary, Random House Dictionary, Etymonline, Concise OED, NED, and Weekley. According to all those English dictionaries, the transfer from Arabic to the Western languages was through Spanish, at an unspecified date. But all the main Spanish dictionaries say Spanish natron is from French. That includes the official dictionary of the Spanish language, Diccionario RAE. The Spanish natron, and also the variant anatron, "are modern technical terms borrowed from French", says the Spanish and Arabic expert Federico Corriente (year 2008). The earliest known modern record of natron in Spanish is year 1817, says the Spanish etymology dictionary Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana (year 1957). The earliest French is 1653 – CNRTL.fr. The earliest English is 1684 – NED. "Natron" and the closely associated "anatron" were established together in English dictionaries from 1706. Nathan Bailey's English Dictionary in 1737 defined natron as "a kind of black, greyish salt taken out of a lake of stagnant water in the territory of Terrana in Egypt" – ref; and defined "anatron" as any of several salts including one taken from Egypt – ref. The substance natron was brought to Europe from Egypt in the medieval centuries as well as in the early modern centuries. The usual word for it in medieval Latin was nitrum (etymologically from ancient Greek without Arabic intermediation). It was called nitrum in late medieval English as well – MED. One late medieval Latin dictionary defined nitrum as "a kind of salt brought from Alexandria", Egypt – ref: Alphita. In the medieval Latin literature more generally nitrum could also be a name for other alkaline salts – ref. In Arabic, a 9th-century Arabic minerals book said natrūn is a type of salt used as a washing agent – ref. That is natron. Many more examples from medieval Arabic are at AlWaraq.net under النطرون al-natrūn and نطرون natrūn. The wordform "natron" occurs in Latin in Italy in a book by Simon of Genoa in the late 13th century, in which "natron" was stated to be simply "the Arabic word for nitrum" – ref: Raja Tazi, year 1998. The wordform "anatron" (formed from al-natrūn) occurs in Latin around year 1300 in a book by the influential Latin alchemist Pseudo-Geber – ref: Pseudo-Geber as published 1542. Both of those two medieval Latin writers had some knowledge of Arabic language. Natron and anatron were rare in medieval Latin. However, in the 16th century, anatron | anathron was adopted in Latin in Germany in the widely disseminated writings of Paracelsus (died 1541) – Paracelsus was influenced by Pseudo-Geber – and then by Paracelsus's followers Oswald Croll (died 1609) and Martin Ruland (died 1602) – ref: Raja Tazi, year 1998. Martin Ruland also used the spelling natron and said natron was synonymous with nitrum – ref: Martin Ruland, year 1612. Despite those precedents in Latin, today's official dictionary of the French language judges that the French natron arrived in French directly from Arabic natrūn, from Egypt, in the mid-17th century, meaning sodium carbonate  – CNRTL.fr. In early 17th century Europe the name nitrum had undesirable ambiguity, as can be seen in the several incompatible meanings for nitrum given in Martin Ruland's 1612 Lexicon Alchemiae. The primary meaning for nitrum was becoming potassium nitrate, aka nitre (the parent of "nitrogen"). Undoubtedly this encouraged adoption of name natron to reduce the potential for misunderstanding. In Europe shortly after sodium was isolated as an element for the first time, in the early 19th century, sodium was given the scientific abbreviation Na from a newly created Latin name, initially natronium then natrium, which goes back etymologically to the medieval and early modern Arabic natrūn. Also in the early 19th century, elemental potassium was isolated for the first time and was soon afterwards given the scientific abbreviation K representing a created Latin name Kalium, which was derived from 18th century scientific Latin Kali meaning potassium carbonate, which goes back etymologically to medieval Arabic al-qalī, which for the medieval Arabs was a mixture of potassium carbonate and sodium carbonate. Crossref alkali on the list.

O

 * orange: نارنج nāranj, orange (a citrus fruit), via Persian and Sanskrit nāraṅga from a Dravidian language. The orange tree came from India. It was introduced to the Mediterranean region by the Arabs in the early 10th century, at which time all oranges were bitter oranges. The word is in all the Mediterranean Latin languages from the later medieval centuries. Today it is naranja in Spanish, but arancia in Italian, and orange in French, and this wordform with the loss of the leading 'n' occurs early as Latin arangia (late 12th century ).

P

 * popinjay (parrot) : ببغاء babaghāʾ | babbaghāʾ, parrot. The change from medieval Arabic sound /b/ to medieval Latin and French sound /p/ also occurs in the loanwords Julep, Jumper, Spinach, and Syrup. The French papegai = "parrot" has a late-12th-century start date and the English dates from a century later. The wordform was affected by the pre-existing (from classical Latin) French gai = Spanish gayo = English "jay (bird)". Parrots were imported to medieval Europe via Arabic speakers.

R

 * realgar : رهج الغار rahj al-ghār, realgar, arsenic sulfide. In medieval times, realgar was used as a rodent poison, as a corrosive, and as a red paint pigment. The ancient Greeks & Romans knew the substance. Other names for it in medieval Arabic writings include "red arsenic" and "rodent poison". Ibn al-Baitar in the early 13th century wrote: "Among the people of the Maghreb it is called rahj al-ghār" (literally: "cavern powder"). In European languages the name's earliest known records are in 13th-century Spanish spelled rejalgar, and 13th-century Italian-Latin spelled realgar. Records in English of the 15th century often spelled it resalgar.


 * ream (quantity of sheets of paper) : رزمة rizma, bale, bundle. Paper itself was introduced to the Latins via the Arabs in and around the 12th and 13th centuries – the adoption by the Latins went slowly; history of paper. The Arabic word for a bundle spread to most European languages along with paper itself, with the initial transfer from Arabic happening in Iberia. Spanish was resma, Italian risma. The Catalan raima, first record 1287, looks the forerunner of the English word-form. First record in English is 1356.


 * rook (chess), roc (mythology) : رُخّ rukhkh, (1) the rook piece in the game of chess, (2) a mythological bird in the 1001 Arabian Nights tales. The Arabic dictionary Lisan al-Arab completed in 1290 said the chess-piece name rukhkh came from Persian; crossref check. The bird meaning for Arabic rukhkh may have come from Persian too. But not from the same word. All available evidence supports the view that the two meanings of Arabic rukhkh sprang from two independent and different roots. The chess rook is in French from about 1150 onward spelled as roc.

S

 * sabkha (landform) : سبخة sabkha , salt marsh. This Arabic word occurs occasionally in English and French in the 19th century. Sabkha with a technical meaning as coastal salt-flat terrain came into general use in sedimentology in the 20th century through numerous studies of the coastal salt flats on the eastern side of the Arabian peninsula.


 * safari: سفر safar, journey. Safari entered English in the late 19th century from Swahili language safari = "journey" which is from Arabic safar = "journey".


 * safflower : عُصفُر ʿusfur, safflower; or a non-standard variant عُصفُر ʿasfar, safflower. The flower of this plant was commercially cultivated for use as a dye in the Mediterranean region in medieval times. From the medieval Arabic word plus Arabic al-, medieval Catalan had alasfor = "safflower". Medieval Catalan also had alazflor = "safflower" where Catalan flor = "flower". But the source of the English word was medieval Italian. The "-fur" or "-far" part of the Arabic word mutated in Italian to "-flore | -fiore" which is Italian for flower. Medieval Italian spellings included asfiore, asflore, asfrole, astifore, affiore, zaflore, saffiore, all meaning safflower. In medieval Arabic dictionaries the spelling is ʿusfur, but an oral variant ʿasfar would be unexceptional in Arabic speech and would be a little better fit to the Romance language wordforms.The safflower is an annual plant that is native to a truly arid climate that has an annual rainy season. The plant has poor defenses against many types of fungal diseases in damp and rainy weather. This greatly restricts the areas in which it can be grown reliably; ref. Alphonse de Candolle in his Origin of Cultivated Plants (year 1885) reports that the ancient Greeks and Romans have not left any clear written evidence that they were acquainted with the safflower plant, particularly not for its use as a dye, even though the evidence is excellent that the ancient Egyptians used safflower – ref (Carthamus tinctorius). In medieval Arabic the most-often-used name for safflower was عُصفُر ʿusfur. Medieval Arabic dictionaries say ʿusfur is the plant that produces a well-known dye and also means the dye itself (Baheth.info) . A summary of the Italian evidence for the Arabic origin of the word "safflower" in late medieval Italian is in Yule & Burnell (year 1903) and much of Yule & Burnell's evidence comes from Pegolotti's Mercatura, year 1340. Italian variant spelling zaflore year 1310 is in TLIO. The Catalan alazflor = "safflower" was used by Francesc Eiximenis (died 1409) and the Catalan alasfor = "bastard saffron", meaning "safflower", was used in an ordinance of king Martin I of Aragon (died 1410), as cited in Vocabulario del comercio medieval: Colección de aranceles aduaneros de la Corona de Aragón (siglo XIII y XIV), by Miguel Gual Camarena, year 1968. (Francesc Eiximenis's usages were in his 1383 book Regiment de la cosa publica which is online). The Catalan alasfor = "safflower", although not often used nowadays, is still listed in modern Catalan dictionaries – ref, ref, ref, ref. In Portuguese, an old and near-obsolete form is açaflor = "safflower" and Portuguese also has alaçor = "safflower" and açafroa = "safflower". In Spanish the usual word for safflower was and is alazor which is from the Arabic al-ʿusfur = "the safflower". In the 13th century in Occitan Romance language in southern France there is safra = "safflower" and safran = "safflower" – Medical Synonym Lists from Medieval Provence. This Occitan form is understood as altered from Arabic ʿusfur | ʿasfar = "safflower" with the alteration clearly showing influence from Occitan safran = "saffron"; it is not understood as a simple direct re-purposing of safran = "saffron". By the way, according to Alphonse de Candolle and others, the ancient Greek cnikos and classical Latin cnicus is to be interpreted as a thistle-type plant different from the safflower.


 * saffron :زعفران zaʿfarān, saffron. Zaʿfarān meaning saffron is commonplace from the outset of writings in Arabic. It was common in medieval Arab cookery. The ancient Romans used saffron but called it crocus. The earliest known for the name saffron in Latin is year 1156 safranum (location in Genoa in Italy, in a commercial contract). The name saffron became predominant in all the Western languages in the late medieval centuries, in word-forms that led to today's French safran, Italian zafferano, Spanish azafrán. Also English organic chemical safranin.


 * saphena (saphenous vein) : الصَّافِن Alṣṣāfin, saphenous vein (saphena vein). The saphena vein is in the human leg. It was one of the veins used in medieval medical bloodletting (phlebotomy), which was the context of use of the word medievally. Medical writers who used the word in Arabic include Al-Razi (died c. 930), Haly Abbas (died c. 990), Albucasis (died c. 1013) and Avicenna (died 1037). In Latin the earliest known record is in an Arabic-to-Latin translation by Constantinus Africanus (died c. 1087) translating Haly Abbas. Bloodletting, which was practiced in ancient Greek and Latin medicine, was revamped in later-medieval Latin medicine under influence from Arabic medicine.


 * sash (ribbon) : شاش shāsh, a ribbon of fine cloth wrapped to form a turban, and usually made of muslin. Crossref muslin which entered English and other Western languages about the same time. In English the early records are in travellers' reports and among the earliest is this comment from an English traveller in the Middle East in 1615: "All of them wear on their heads white shashes.... Shashes are long towels of Calico wound about their heads." In the later 17th century in English, "shash" still had that original meaning, and additionally it took on the meaning of a ribbon of fine cloth wrapped around the waist. About the beginning of the early 18th century the predominant wordform in English changed from "shash" to "sash". In Arabic today shāsh means gauze or muslin.


 * sequin (clothing ornament) : سكّة sikka, minting die for coins, also meaning the place where coins were minted, and also meaning coinage in general. In its early use in English and French, sequin was the name of Venetian and Turkish gold coins, and it came from Italian zecchino (early 16th century), which came from Italian zecca (early 13th century). Production of the Venetian sequin (coin) ended in 1797. "The word might well have followed the coin into oblivion, but in the 19th century it managed to get itself applied to the small round shiny pieces of metal applied to clothing."


 * serendipity : This word was created in English in 1754 from "Serendip", an old fairy-tale place, from سرنديب Serendīb, an old Arabic name for the island of Sri Lanka. Fortified in English by its resemblance to the etymologically unrelated "serenity". The tale with the serendipitous happenings was The Three Princes of Serendip.


 * sheikh : شيخ shaīkh, sheikh. It has been in English since the 17th century meaning an Arab sheikh. In the 20th century it took on a slangy additional meaning of "strong, romantic man". This is attributed to a hit movie, The Sheik, 1921, starring Rudolph Valentino, and after the movie was a hit the book it was based on became a hit, and spawned imitators.


 * sofa : صُفَّة soffa, a low platform or dais. The Arabic was adopted into Turkish, and from Turkish it entered Western languages in the 16th century meaning a Middle-Eastern-style dais with rugs and cushions. The Western-style meaning —a sofa with legs— started in late-17th-century French.


 * spinach : إسبناخ isbinākh in Andalusian Arabic, and إِسفاناخ isfānākh in medieval Arabic but, the main word for it is سبانخ . more generally, from Persian aspanākh, spinach. "The spinach plant was unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans. It was the Arabs who introduced the spinach into Spain, whence it spread to the rest of Europe," and the same is true of the name as well. The first records in English are around year 1400.


 * sugar, sucrose, sucrase: سكّر sukkar, sugar. The word is ultimately from Sanskritic sharkara = "sugar". Cane sugar developed in ancient India originally. It was produced by the medieval Arabs on a pretty extensive scale although it always remained expensive throughout the medieval era. History of sugar. Among the earliest records in England are these entries in the account books of an Anglo-Norman abbey in Durham: year 1302 "Zuker Marok", 1309 "succre marrokes", 1310 "Couker de Marrok", 1316 "Zucar de Cypr[us]". In Latin the early records are about year 1100 spelled zucharum and zucrum. Spellings of the word for sugar in later-medieval Latin included sucrum, succarum, sucharum, sucarium, succurum, zucrum, zucara, zuccarum, zuchar, zucharum, zuccura, zucurium – Du Cange. Those are Latinizations of oral Romance speech. Of the early records in Latin, the earliest is in the Arabic-to-Latin medical translator Constantinus Africanus (died c. 1087). Constantinus has the word a dozen times in his Theorica Pantegni, which on the whole is a translation of a medical book of 'Ali ibn al-'Abbas al-Majusi (died c. 990). A manuscript of Theorica Pantegni dated 3rd quarter of the 12th century as a physical manuscript spells it zucharum | zucharo – Codex EÖ.II.14. Another of the early Latin records is zucra about 1125 in the Crusades chronicle Historia Hierosolymitanae expeditionis ("History of the Expedition to Jerusalem") by Albert of Aachen. The ancient Greeks & Romans knew sugar as an import from India, and they used it as a medicine, not as a food. Ancient Greek sakcharon and classical Latin saccharum meant "sugar" (examples from ancient writers). No historical continuity exists between the classical Latin saccharum and the later-medieval Latin zuccharum | sucharum, and nobody nowadays contends that saccharum (with its letter 'a') was the ancestor of zuccharum | sucharum (with its letter 'u'). Instead, etymology dictionaries are longstandingly unanimous that the Arabic sukkar was the parent of the later-medieval Latin word. On the other hand, modern English "saccharin" and "saccharide" were created as scientific terms as modern borrowings of the ancient saccharum – New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. The Latin form sucrum or the French form sucre = "sugar" produced the modern chemistry terms sucrose and sucrase.


 * sultan, sultana : سلطان sultān, authority, ruler. The first ruler to use Sultan as a formal title was an Islamic Turkic-speaking ruler in Central Asia in the 11th century. He borrowed the word from Arabic. In Arabic grammar سلطانة sultāna is the feminine of sultān. Caliph, emir, qadi, and vizier are other Arabic-origin words connected with rulers. Their use in English is mostly confined to discussions of Middle Eastern history.


 * sumac: سمّاق summāq, sumac species of shrub or its fruit (Rhus coriaria). Anciently and medievally, different components of the sumac were used in leather making, in dyeing, and in medicine. The Arabic geography writer Al-Muqaddasi (died circa 1000) mentions summāq as one of the commercial crops of Syria. Sumac was called rhus in Latin in the classical and early medieval periods. In the late medieval period sumac became the predominant name in Latin. The Arabic name is found in Latin starting in the 10th century and as such it is one of the earliest loanwords on this list. From the Latin, the word is in late medieval English medical books spelled sumac.


 * Swahili : سواحل sawāhil, coasts (plural of sāhil, coast). Historically Swahili was the language used in commerce along the east coast of Africa, along 2000 kilometers of coast. Swahili is grammatically a Bantu language, with about one-third of its vocabulary taken from Arabic.


 * syrup, sherbet, sorbet : شراب sharāb, a word with two senses in Arabic, "a drink" and "syrup". Medieval Arabic medical writers used it to mean a medicinal syrup, and this was passed into Latin in the late 11th century as siropus | siruppus | syrupus with the same meaning. Constantinus Africanus (died c. 1087), who was fluent in Arabic, is the author of the earliest known records in Latin. The change from sound /ʃ/ to sound /s/ in going from sharāb to siroppus reflects the fact that Latin phonology did not use an /ʃ/ sound ever. The -us of siroppus is a carrier of Latin grammar and nothing more. In late medieval Europe a sirup was usually medicinal.The Arabic medical writer Ibn Sina (died 1037) called syrup sharāb and has dozens of different syrups in his Book V, Treatise 6: On potions and thickened juices. The medical writer Najm al-Din Mahmud (died 1330) has another set of dozens of recipes for viscous sharāb for medical purposes, where fruit juices are boiled to reduce water by evaporation, and sugar is added – ref (in Arabic and French). "Sharāb... is very common in [old] Arabic medical writings", says Reinhart Dozy year 1869. Some comments on the use of syrups among the medieval Arabs are in the book Food and Foodways of Medieval Cairenes, year 2011 pages 461-464. In Latin, the word is in the Arabic-to-Latin medical translator Constantinus Africanus (died c. 1087) with the early surviving copies of his work spelling it variously syrop_ | sirop_ | sirup_ – ref, ref. No records pre-dating Constantinus Africanus are known in Latin. In the 12th century in Latin, siropus | sirupus | syropus | syrupus is frequent in the works of the Salernitan school of medicine (ref), whose ways of doing medicine were much influenced by Constantinus Africanus. The word is frequent in the Arabic-to-Latin medical translations of the translator Gerard of Cremona (died c. 1187) (examples). In late medieval western Europe, "syrup" usually meant a medicinal syrup (sugar + liquid + medicine) – that is well documented for 15th-century English in the Middle English Dictionary and is evident in the entry for sirop in the Dictionary of late medieval French. Separately from syrup, in the 16th century the same Arabic rootword re-entered Western European languages from Turkish. Turkish sherbet | shurbet = "a sweet lemonade" entered with that meaning into Italian and French as "sorbet" and directly into English as "sherbet". The Turkish was from the Arabic word-form شربة sharba(t).

Addendum for words that may or may not be of Arabic ancestry

 * racquet or racket (tennis) : Racquet with today's meaning has a late medieval start date. There are unanswered questions about its origin. French raquette (synonymous with Italian racchetta and English racquet) is widely reported as derived from medieval Latin rascete which meant the carpal bones of the wrist and the tarsal bones of the feet. The earliest records of this Latin anatomy word are in two 11th-century Latin medical texts, one of which was by the Arabic-speaking Constantinus Africanus who drew from Arabic medical sources, and surely he did take the anatomy word from Arabic. But there is no evidence to connect the anatomy word with the game word racquet. It would be a big leap in semantics to re-use the bones word as a word for a racquet. To warrant belief that this leap occurred, evidence would be necessary. Other etymology ideas try to connect racquet with other pre-existing words in late medieval Europe, but again with shortfalls in evidence.


 * scarlet : This word was in all Western European languages in the late medieval centuries. It first appears in European languages in Latin about year 1100 spelled scarlata. The early meaning was a costly, dense and smooth cloth made of wool. The cloth could be any color, but was usually dyed red. In the late medieval centuries the word took on the meaning of red color, concurrently with continued meaning as a high-quality woolen cloth. The origin of the word is an unsettled issue. No candidate parent word in Latin is known of. So an Arabic origin is possible. A specific Arabic source has been proposed, but the evidence for it is not good. A Germanic source has also been proposed and has been preferred by some historians of medieval textiles. The following is a 90-page essay in French arguing that the medieval Latin word scarlata (English scarlet) is of Germanic origin: Le Drap ESCARLATE au Moyen Age: Essai sur l'étymologie et la signification du mot écarlate et notes techniques sur la fabrication de ce drap de laine au moyen age, by J.-B. Weckerlin, year 1905. Weckerlin's argument has been endorsed by, e.g., Ref (in French) and Ref (in French). Weckerlin's argument has evidence gaps and leaves room for doubt. The following is a 7-page argument in English that scarlata came from Germanic. It agrees with Weckerlin's conclusion, and takes some of its information from Weckerlin, but mostly follows a different line of evidence: Ref (year 2015). The argument for a Germanic source has good plausibility, but again some room for doubt exists. The following is a 12-page argument that the medieval Latin word came from Arabic: "Ciclatoun Scarlet", by George Foot Moore, year 1913. In the 19th century it was often said that the medieval word scarlata had come from Persian. To the knowledge of people in the 19th century, there was no suitable parent word to be seen in Latin, Greek, Arabic, or Germanic, but there was one in Persian. However, researchers in the 20th century have rejected the idea that the European word could have come from Persian, and none of the above references lend any support to it, and the last two above go into reasons why it ought to be rejected. In continuation from the 19th century tradition, some dictionaries today still summarily say the word came from Persian (not Arabic); e.g. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary. Others of today's dictionaries say the medieval Latin word is "of unknown origin"; e.g. Collins English Dictionary. Others say the word came from Arabic (not Persian); e.g. Concise Oxford Dictionary.


 * soda, sodium : Soda first appears in Western languages in late medieval Latin and Italian meaning the seaside plant Salsola soda and similar glasswort plants used to make soda ash for use in glassmaking, and simultaneously meaning soda ash itself. In medieval Catalan the name was sosa = "soda ash". Although of uncertain origin, an Arabic origin one way or another is considered likely by many reporters. It is most often said to be from Arabic سواد suwwād or سويدة suwayda, one or more species of glassworts whose ashes yielded soda ash, especially the species Suaeda vera. But that etymon suffers from a want of documentary evidence at a sufficiently early date. Also the Catalan form sosa is historically prior to the Italian form soda. A judgement that soda is "of unknown origin" is very defensible today. The name "sodium" was derived from soda in the early 19th century.