Re: Country names

Quoting David Starner <dvdeug@...>:

> On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 09:22:55AM +0200, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > Reminds me: www.zompist.com gives the following Arabic etymology for
> the word
> > "candy":
> >
> > candy - short for 'sugar candy', from sugar + qandi 'candied', from
> qand 'cane
> > sugar' - from a Dravidian language
> >
> > I was taught it derived from the placename "Candia", because Crete was
> a major
> > producer of sugar cane during some period. Does anyone know more
> about
> > this?
>
>
> The 1913 Unabrigided Webster (available on the net) gives (excuse the
> random phonetic spelling that later got hacked into ASCII):
>
> Candy \Can"dy\ (k[a^]n"d[y^]), v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Candied}
> (k[a^]n"d[=e]d); p. pr & vb. n. {Candying}.] [F. candir (cf.
> It. candire, Sp. az['u]car cande or candi), fr. Ar. & Pers.
> qand, fr. Skr. Kha[.n][.d]da piece, sugar in pieces or
> lumps, fr. kha[.n][.d], kha[.d] to break.]
>
> So from the French, from the Arabic or Persian, from the Sanskrit (?).
This is beginning to be quite a number of hypotheses ... Sanskrit, Dravidian, or
from Crete. Perhaps one of those aforementioned morphosemantic mergers have been
going on?

                                                  Andreas

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