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- "Ты когда-нибудь был в Китае?"
17 Comments
Gwenci
466
TL;DR: from the name Khitan, a Mongolian tribe which once ruled Northern China; got to Russian from Mandarin via a Turkic language.
Китай: From Old East Slavic Китай (Kitaй), from a Turkic source; compare Kazakh Қытай (Qıtay), Kyrgyz Кытай (Kıtay), Uzbek Xitoy, Turkmen Hytaý; from Old Turkic Qïtaǰ “Khitan”, from Mandarin 契丹 (Qìdān, “Khitan”), the Chinese name of a Mongolian tribe who ruled Manchuria from 907–1115 CE.
Cognate with Spanish Catay and English Cathay.
MagmaLedle21
456
It originally came from a Sanskrit name for China, which was borrowed through Persian, Portuguese, and eventually into English.