Coffee Etymology










Col. Prideaux then calls, as a witness to the Anglo-Arabic pronunciation, one whose evidence was not available when the New English Dictionary and Hobson-Jobson articles were written. This is John Jourdain, a Dorsetshire seaman, whose Diary was printed by the Hakluyt Society in 1905. On May 28, 1609, he records that “in the afternoone wee departed out of Hatch (Al-Hauta, the capital of the Lahej district near Aden), and travelled untill three in the morninge, and then wee rested in the plaine fields untill three the next daie, neere unto a cohoo howse in the desert.” On June 5 the party, traveling from Hippa (Ibb), “laye in the mountaynes, our camells being wearie, and our selves little better. This mountain is called Nasmarde (Nakīl Sumāra), where all the cohoo grows.” Farther on was “a little village, where there is sold cohoo and fruite. The seeds of this cohoo is a greate marchandize, for it is carried to grand Cairo and all other places of Turkey, and to the Indias.” Prideaux, however, mentions that another sailor, William Revett, in his journal (1609) says, referring to Mocha, that “Shaomer Shadli (Shaikh ‘Ali bin ‘Omar esh-Shādil) was the fyrst inventour for drynking of coffe, and therefor had in esteemation.” This rather looks to Prideaux as if on the coast of Arabia, and in the mercantile towns, the Persian pronunciation was in vogue; whilst in the interior, where Jourdain traveled, the Englishman reproduced the Arabic.

Mr. Chattopádhyáya, discussing Col. Prideaux’s views as expressed above, said:

Col. Prideaux may doubt “if the worthy mariner, in entering the word in his log, was influenced by the abstruse principles of phonetics enunciated” by me, but he will admit that the change fromkahvah to coffee is a phonetic change, and must be due to the operation of some phonetic principle. The average man, when he endeavours to write a foreign word in his own tongue, is handicapped considerably by his inherited and acquired phonetic capacity. And, in fact, if we take the quotations made in “Hobson-Jobson,” and classify the various forms of the word coffee according to the nationality of the writer, we obtain very interesting results.

Let us take Englishmen and Dutchmen first. In Danvers’s Letters (1611) we have both “coho pots” and “coffao pots”; Sir T. Roe (1615) and Terry (1616) have cohu; Sir T. Herbert (1638) hascoho and copha; Evelyn (1637), coffee; Fryer (1673) coho; Ovington (1690), coffee; and Valentijn (1726), coffi. And from the two examples given by Col. Prideaux, we see that Jourdain (1609) hascohoo, and Revett (1609) has coffe.

To the above should be added the following by English writers, given in Foster’s English Factories in India (1618–21, 1622–23, 1624–29): cowha (1619), cowhe, couha (1621), coffa (1628).

Let us now see what foreigners (chiefly French and Italian) write. The earliest European mention is by Rauwolf, who knew it in Aleppo in 1573. He has the form chaube. Prospero Alpini (1580) has caova; Paludanus (1598) chaoua; Pyrard de Laval (1610) cahoa; P. Della Valle (1615) cahue; Jac. Bontius (1631) caveah; and the Journal d’Antoine Galland (1673) cave. That is, Englishmen use forms of a certain distinct type, viz., cohu, coho, coffao, coffe, copha, coffee, which differ from the more correct transliteration of foreigners.

In 1610 the Portuguese Jew, Pedro Teixeira (in the Hakluyt Society’s edition of his Travels) used the word kavàh.

The inferences from these transitional forms seem to be: 1. The word found its way into the languages of Europe both from the Turkish and from the Arabic. 2. The English forms (which have strong stress on the first syllable) have ŏ instead of ă, and f instead of h. 3. The foreign forms are unstressed and have no h. The original v or w (or labialized u) is retained or changed into f.

It may be stated, accordingly, that the chief reason for the existence of two distinct types of spelling is the omission of h in unstressed languages, and the conversion of h into f under strong stress in stressed languages. Such conversion often takes place in Turkish; for example, silah dar in Persian (which is a highly stressed language) becomes zilif dar in Turkish. In the languages of India, on the other hand, in spite of the fact that the aspirate is usually very clearly sounded, the word qăhvăh is pronounced kaiva by the less educated classes, owing to the syllables being equally stressed.

Now for the French viewpoint. Jardin opines that, as regards the etymology of the word coffee, scholars are not agreed and perhaps never will be. Dufour says the word is derived from caouhe, a name given by the Turks to the beverage prepared from the seed. Chevalier d’Arvieux, French consul at Alet, Savary, and Trevoux, in his dictionary, think that coffee comes from the Arabic, but from the word cahoueh or quaweh, meaning to give vigor or strength, because, says d’Arvieux, its most general effect is to fortify and strengthen. Tavernier combats this opinion. Moseley attributes the origin of the word coffee to Kaffa. Sylvestre de Sacy, in his Chréstomathie Arabe, published in 1806, thinks that the word kahwa, synonymous with makli, roasted in a stove, might very well be the etymology of the word coffee. D’Alembert in his encyclopedic dictionary, writes the word caffé. Jardin concludes that whatever there may be in these various etymologies, it remains a fact that the word coffee comes from an Arabian word, whether it be kahuakahouehkaffa or kahwa, and that the peoples who have adopted the drink have all modified the Arabian word to suit their pronunciation. This is shown by giving the word as written in various modern languages:

French, café; Breton, kafe; German, kaffee (coffee tree, kaffeebaum); Dutch, koffie (coffee tree, koffieboonen); Danish, kaffe; Finnish, kahvi; Hungarian, kavé; Bohemian, kava; Polish, kawa; Roumanian, cafea; Croatian, kafa; Servian, kava; Russian, kophe; Swedish, kaffe; Spanish, café; Basque, kaffia; Italian, caffè; Portuguese, café; Latin (scientific), coffea; Turkish, kahué; Greek, kaféo; Arabic, qahwah (coffee berry,bun); Persian, qéhvé (coffee berry, bun); Annamite, ca-phé; Cambodian, kafé; Dukni, bunbund; Teluyan, kapri-vittulu; Tamil, kapi-kottai or kopi; Canareze, kapi-bija; Chinese, kia-feyteoutsé; Japanese, kéhi; Malayan, kawakoppi; Abyssinian, bonn; Foulak, legal café; Sousou, houri caff; Marquesan, kapi; Chinook, kaufee; Volapuk, kaf; Esperanto, kafva.



10 thoughts on “Coffee Etymology”

  1. How is it pronounced in the Vietnamese language?
    Just gimme’ a cuppa’ joe, black, no soybean additives. No pink or blue stuff. No stevia. Not harvested from wild cat scat. Hand picked and roasted by Carmelite nuns in Bolivia. Packaged with a prayer.


  2. I find this kind of thing infinitely interesting. It’s the main reason I still take linguistics classes despite their lack of relevance to ANY of my curriculum requirements.


    1. My mother attributed her good English usage and comprehension to having studied Greek and Latin in grade school. If you find yourself drawn to etymology and linguistics, perhaps a study in Sanskrit would enhance your understanding.


      1. Foreign languages and I have never been compatible. I find learning about the origins of words interesting, but have an incredibly difficult time learning learning the languages involved. As for skill in rhetoric, mine comes from a natural desire to express myself clearly and intelligently.


        1. Got it. Me, too. It was an observation. I would be happy with a really complete, good online dictionary or encyclopedia of the English language. I used to look words up in OED, but now I’m too lazy and rely on the folks from Silly Valley and click on the little magnifying glass in the upper right hand corner of my screen. Turning into a lab rat no matter how much I resist it.


          1. I swear by Merriam-Webster and still occasionally read it and it’s matched thesaurus for fun. They’re really nice, leather bound additions.


  3. All I can find among the clothes in my closet library are The Reader’s Digest Family Word Finder and The American Heritage Dictionary…
    Both of which are remarkably etymology free (looked up phenomenon). Picked up from some free table somewhere. You have piqued (non-irritated form) my interest in Webster’s. I’ll check it out at the library. I think there is some way to get some of the online dictionaries to be easily clickable in my computer’s database. But not the OED, it’s not an inexpensive production. Would love to have their entire sets in my database but imagine it would cost $$$. Be nice to have a loaded hard disk like the New Yorker offer(ed?) with its complete archives. Erratic internet connectivity here makes going constantly online frustrating. When I find an interesting word in reading biblioklept or others, I look it up in Spotlight, but would like to meander through time and the changes the word has gone through. I think that Sanskrit is the ‘mother tongue’ of European languages. There was a flourishing civilization there many tens of thousands of years ago, Eurocentric Judeo-Christian centric opinions to the contrary. I come across evolutions of myths from the Vedas in Egyptian, Sumerian, Jewish, etc. folk histories in my casual studies. Etymology is tricky. For example, I wonder if the Polynesian recreational drink, Kava, is some how related because of its effects (caffeine for some is a relaxant), but most likely not, and if it were, academic naysayers would discount all that. Long live Thor Heyerdahl.


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