Etymology of tea facts for kids

The Chinese character for tea

Tea is a popular drink all over the world! But have you ever wondered why it has so many different names? The way we say "tea" often tells us a story about how tea traveled from China to different countries.

Most words for tea around the globe fit into three main groups:

• Te (like "tea" in English)
• Cha (like "char" in some places)
• Chai (often meaning "spiced tea")

The word "cha" was one of the first to arrive in English, around the 1590s. It came from Portuguese traders who learned it from the Cantonese language in Macau. The more common word "tea" came later, in the 1600s, through the Dutch. They likely picked it up from the Malay word teh, or directly from the tê sound in Min Chinese. The third word, "chai," usually means "spiced tea." It came from a northern Chinese way of saying "cha." This word traveled by land through Central Asia to Persia, where it got an extra sound, -yi. It then came into English in the 1900s through the Hindustani language.

Experts believe that all these different ways of saying the word in China came from the same original word. Over hundreds of years, the sounds changed in different areas. The Chinese written word for tea, 茶, was created in the middle of the Tang Dynasty. It was made by changing an older character, 荼 (pronounced tu), which meant "bitter vegetable." In ancient China, tu was used for many plants, and by the Han Dynasty, it also meant "tea." The Chinese word for tea probably came from older languages spoken in the area where tea plants first grew, in southwest China or Burma. It might have come from an old Austro-Asiatic word like *la, meaning "leaf."

How the Word "Tea" Sounds Around the World

The Chinese character for tea is 茶. It used to be written with an extra line as 荼 (pronounced tu). It got its current look in the Tang Dynasty. This new form was first used in a famous book about tea called The Classic of Tea in the 700s.

The word tú (荼) appeared in old Chinese books like Shijing. It meant a "bitter vegetable" and could refer to plants like sow thistle or chicory. During the Han Dynasty, it also started to mean tea. By the time of the Northern Wei period, the word tu also appeared with a part that meant "wood," referring to a tea tree. The word 茶, first used in the Tang Dynasty, means only tea.

It's pronounced differently in various varieties of Chinese:

• chá in Mandarin
• zo and dzo in Wu Chinese
• ta and te in Min Chinese

Some people think the sound tu (荼) led to tê. But language experts believe that cha, te, and dzo all came from the same original sound, something like dra. This sound changed over many centuries. Other old words for tea included jia, she, and chuan. But ming (茗), which means "fine, special tender tea," is the only other old word for tea still used today.

Most Chinese languages, like Mandarin and Cantonese, say something like cha. But Min languages, spoken along the southern coast of China and in Southeast Asia, say something like teh. These two pronunciations traveled to other languages around the world in different ways:

• Te sounds come from the Amoy tê of the Hokkien language in southern Fujian. Ports like Xiamen (Amoy) and Quanzhou were important places where foreign traders met. European traders, like the Dutch, might have learned this pronunciation directly from Fujian or Taiwan, where they had a port. Or they might have learned it from Malay traders in Bantam, Java. The Dutch word thee then spread to other countries in Western Europe. This is how the English word "tea" and similar words in other languages came about. It's the most common form worldwide.

• Cha or chai (from Persian: چای chay) probably came from the northern Chinese pronunciation chá. This word traveled by land along the Silk Road to Central Asia and Persia. There, it got the Persian ending -yi before moving on to Russian, Arabic, Turkish, and other languages. The "chai" pronunciation first came into English from Russian or Arabic in the early 1900s. Later, it became known as a word for "spiced tea" through Hindi-Urdu, influenced by the Mughals. "Cha" also came from the Cantonese pronunciation tsa around Guangzhou (Canton) and the ports of Hong Kong and Macau. These were also important trading spots, especially with the Portuguese, who spread the word to India in the 1500s. However, the Korean and Japanese ways of saying cha did not come from Cantonese. They were borrowed much earlier in Chinese history.

English actually has all three forms:

• cha or char (from the late 1500s)
• tea (from the 1600s)
• chai (from the 1900s)

Languages that had closer contact with Chinese, like Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese, might have borrowed their words for tea even earlier. These are called Sino-Xenic pronunciations. For example, in Japanese, "cha" is common (often with a polite prefix o- as ocha). But sometimes "sa" is used (like in sadô). Japanese also has older, less common pronunciations like ta and da. Similarly, Korean has ta in addition to cha, and Vietnamese has trà in addition to chè. These different pronunciations in Japanese came from different times when the words were borrowed.

A few words for tea don't fit into the "te," "cha," or "chai" groups. These are from local languages in the area where the tea plant originally grew. Examples include:

• la (for tea bought elsewhere) and miiem (for wild tea gathered in the hills) from the Wa people in northeast Burma and southwest Yunnan.
• letpet in Burmese and meng in Lamet (both meaning "fermented tea leaves").
• tshuaj yej in Hmong language.
• miang in Thai ("fermented tea").

These languages belong to the Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman, and Tai language families, found in Southeast Asia and southwest China. Some experts think that Austro-Asiatic languages might be the very first source of the word "tea," including the Chinese words like tu, cha, and ming. For example, cha might have come from an old Austro-Asiatic word *la (meaning "leaf"). And ming might be from the Mon–Khmer word meng (fermented tea leaves). Speakers of Chinese, Tibeto-Burman, and Tai languages who met Austro-Asiatic speakers then borrowed their words for tea.

How Tea Trade Routes Shaped Its Name

The different words for tea mostly fall into two main groups:

• Words like "te" (from Min Chinese)
• Words like "cha" (from Cantonese and Mandarin)

This shows how tea traveled around the world:

• Countries that traded by land with central China (like North Asia, Central Asia, India, and the Middle East) often use words similar to cha. This happened a lot through the Silk Road.
• Countries that traded by sea with southeast China (like many parts of Europe) often use words similar to teh.

The words different languages use for "tea" can tell us where those countries first got their tea and learned about tea culture:

• Portuguese traders were the first Europeans to bring in large amounts of tea. The Portuguese word for tea (chá) came from Cantonese in the 1550s. They learned it from their trading posts in southern China, especially Macau.

• In Central Asia, the Mandarin word cha became the Persian word chay. This form spread with trade and culture from Central Asia.

• Russia (chai) learned about tea from Central Asia.

• The Dutch word for "tea" (thee) comes from Min Chinese. The Dutch might have learned their word for tea directly from Fujian or Formosa through trade. Or they might have learned it from Malay traders in Java who had already adopted the Min pronunciation teh. The Dutch first brought tea to Europe around 1606 from Macao through Bantam, Java. They played a big part in the early European tea trade through the Dutch East India Company. This influenced other European languages, including English, French (thé), Spanish (té), and German (Tee).

• The Dutch first brought tea to England in 1644. By the 1800s, most British tea was bought directly from merchants in Canton (Guangzhou), where people used the word cha. However, the English kept their Dutch-derived word "tea." But "char" is sometimes used informally in British English to mean tea.

Sometimes, a language might have both a "te" form and a "cha" form. One might be a borrowed version of the other:

• In North America, the word "chai" almost always means the Indian masala chai (spiced tea), not just regular tea.
• In Moroccan Arabic, shay means "regular black Middle Eastern tea." But atay specifically means green tea from Zhejiang or Fujian with fresh mint leaves. Moroccans are said to have developed this taste for green tea after their ruler Mulay Hassan traded some European prisoners for a whole ship of Chinese tea. You can learn more about this in Moroccan tea culture.
• The informal Greek word for tea is tsáï, which comes from the Slavic word chai. The more formal word, used in earlier times, is téïon, from tê.
• The Polish word for a tea-kettle is czajnik, which comes from the Russian word Чай (pronounced chai). However, the word for tea in Polish is herbata. This, along with the Lithuanian arbata, came from the Dutch herba thee, meaning "tea herb."
• In Finland, the usual word for tea is tee, borrowed from Swedish. But in eastern Finland and Helsinki, people sometimes informally say tsai, tsaiju, saiju, or saikka. These words are related to the Russian word chai. The latter words always mean black tea, while green tea is always tee.
• In Ireland, especially in Dublin, people sometimes use "cha" for "tea." They also use an older pronunciation "tay" (from which the Irish Gaelic word tae comes). "Char" was a common slang term for tea among military forces in the British Empire and Commonwealth in the 1800s and 1900s, and it spread into everyday language.
• The British slang word "char" for "tea" came from its Cantonese Chinese pronunciation "cha." The spelling was changed because "ar" is a common way to write that sound in British English.

Words for Tea from the "Te" Group

Notes:

• ⁽¹⁾ This word comes from Latin herba thea (meaning "tea herb"). It's found in Polish, Western Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Kashubian.
• ⁽²⁾ té or thé is an old or literary term in Czech. Since the early 1900s, čaj is used for 'tea' in Czech (see the next table).
• ⁽³⁾ nīr means water; tēyilai means "tea leaf" (ilai means "leaf").
• ⁽⁴⁾ nīru means water; ṭīyāku means "tea leaf" (āku = leaf in Telugu).

Words for Tea from the "Cha" Group

Notes:

• ⁽¹⁾ The main pronunciations of 茶 in Korea and Japan are 차 cha and ちゃ cha, respectively. (Japanese ocha (おちゃ) is a polite way of saying it.) These are connected to how the word was pronounced in the capitals of the Song Dynasty and Ming dynasty periods.
• ⁽²⁾ Trà and chè are different ways to say 茶. Chè is mostly used in northern Vietnam and describes tea made with freshly picked leaves.

Words for Tea from the "Chai" Group

Notes:

• ⁽¹⁾ This word came from the older pronunciation چا cha.

Other Words for Tea

• ⁽¹⁾ Remember that cha is the most common way to say "tea" in Japanese and Korean.
• ⁽²⁾ This refers to fermented tea leaves that are eaten as a meal.
• ⁽³⁾ This also refers to fermented tea.