▪
[v1-v2]▪ Lokotsch1927#2187: Ar
zaytūn ‘olives’, n.un.
zaytūnaẗ ‘olive’, + Ar art.
al- > Span
aceituna, Port
azeitona ‘Olive’. From Tu
zeytin : Serb
zejtin, Russ
zitin ‘Baumöl’. – Cf. also ↗
zayt.
▪ Tu
zeytin ‘olive(s)’ (
1303 Codex Cumanicus), from Ar
zaytūn ‘id.’ < Ar
zayt ‘(olive) oil’ < Aram
zeytā ‘id.’, akin to Hbr
zayt and Phoen
zyt ‘id.’ – Nişanyan_20Aug2015.
[v3]▪ Lokotsch1927#2188: Ar
zaytūn : medieval name for the big Chinese trade port Tseutung oder Tswan-tschou-fu in Fokien [see above, section HIST]. The name was eponymous for a certain type of textile, namely Ar
ʔaṭlas zaytūn ‘Zaytunic satin’. Preceded by the article
al-, the Ar n.pr.loc. gave Sp
aceituni,
setuni, mFr
zatony, Fr
satin, mIt
zetani, It
zetanino,
setino [under influence of
seta ‘silk’]; Engl
satin, Ge
Satin. Hirth ChinFW 204/205 remarks that Cantonese silk factories still were producing a textile known to this day under the name of
ssū-tuan, Cantonese
szetün ‘silk atlas’. »It seems that Ar traders confused the name of this textile with that of their own trading colony, Zaytūn, which had become famous already before Canton.« – Cf. however the following.
▪ Engl
satin (
mC14), »from oFrench
satin (C14), perh. from Arabic
(ʔaṭlas) zaytūnī, lit. ‘(satin) from
Zaytūn ’, a Chinese city, perh. modern
Quanzhou in Fukien province, southern China, a major port in the Middle Ages, with a resident community of European traders. The form of the word perhaps influenced in Fr by Lat seta ‘silk’. – OED finds the Ar connection etymologically untenable and takes the Fr word straight from Lat« –
EtymOnline.