599: sino and china Jul 29, 2016

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Some names for areas have combining forms, such as 'Afro-' for such as in Afroasiatic, or 'Indo-' as in 'Indo-European'. The combining form for 'China', however, is 'Sino' as in 'Sino-tibetan'. The form itself does not come from the word 'China' but instead the Latin 'Sinae' meaning "the Chinese". Many other languages including Greek, Arabic, and Sanskrit had words for "China," beginning with 'sin-', probably from the Ch'in dynasty. Not all of those languages had the English 'ch' sound, but English does, so it was possible to take the word from 'Ch'in' or 'Qin' (the exact dynasty that gave the name is the subject of debate), but other languages has to assimilate the sound to make it pronounceable.

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