# Etymology: cotton



## Flaminius

I have been following a discussion in Japanese Forum whether its _wata_, cotton ball, is of Arabic origin.  I am just wondering if Arabic _wada_ is not a loan itself since there is another word for cotton, _quTn_, which is more productive morphologically (trilateral root that has produced several derivatives).

Could kind posters at Arabic Forum please inform me the etymology of _wada_?

Thank you in advance,
Flaminius


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## Aoyama

Thank you for this good (and logical) idea. We will ultimately find out and this will, undoubtedly be a TROVE.


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## cherine

I read the thread in the Japanese forum. The problem is that I can't guess what that word "wata" can be in Arabic !

In my French dictionary (Le Robert), they say that the word "ouate" comes from the Arabic word "bata'in" (!) But this is strange too.
I guess we still need to make more search. I'll let you know if I find anything.


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## Jana337

If you do not find anything, move this thread into the German forum because the German word is Watte. My German dictionary gives Dutch and Middle Latin in the etymological section. 

Jana


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## Whodunit

Jana337 said:


> If you do not find anything, move this thread into the German forum because the German word is Watte. My German dictionary gives Dutch and Middle Latin in the etymological section.
> 
> Jana


 
Wouldn't it be "ovatta" in Italian? You should definitely move it to the OL forum.


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## Lugubert

It seems difficult to trace the word further back than middle Latin in 1380: _wadda_. The Duden 7: Das Herkunftswörterbuch gives up already in the 1700's. A Swedish etymological dictionary quotes the theory that Arabic "batn (bātin)" might be the source, but is "on formal grounds" sceptic. I suppose the reference means something like in Wehr: biTāna '... lining (of a garment) ...'

Added: In Ugaritic, the root qTn means "fine, thin". Also Assyrian and Bible Hebrew go for meanings like thin, small, young from this root. No cotton. There's nothing resembling "cotton" or "wadda" for cotton in the OT.


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## Whodunit

While this thread is still in the Arabic forum, I'd like to inform you that the English word _cutton_ comes from Arabic _quTn_ (*قطن*).


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## Aoyama

Thank you for all these interesting answers, we may be getting somewhere. 
I am nevertheless sure to have seen, in a dictionary, the word *wata* as being the origin of *ouate* .Will check and be back .


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## Aoyama

Didn't find yet what I'm looking for, but :
.Wikipedia states that *ouate *comes from arabic (not specifying which word) in its list of "french words coming from arabic"
. another trail may come from the word *wad* in english (origin unclear, could it be linked to *ouate, wada, vada *etc ?). Wad sounds like a _finished product_ (of cotton ?), but the similitude maybe a coincidence .


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## cherine

Whodunit said:


> Wouldn't it be "ovatta" in Italian? You should definitely move it to the OL forum.


I Totally agree 
Thread moved to Other Languages forum, in search for more opinions


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## Aoyama

Once again, welcome to this thread. All help warmly expected ...
The question is not so much about the etymology of *cotton* itself (which we know already) but  between the link of the reading *wata* (men) in japanese, connected to another word (western, arabic ?). One possibility being a word ( _which one_ ?) that is the origin for the french *ouate*, and other words in other languages (*wad, vata, ovatta,* etc).


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## Manuel_M

Whodunit said:


> While this thread is still in the Arabic forum, I'd like to inform you that the English word _cutton_ comes from Arabic _quTn_ (*قطن*).


 
as does the Maltese word *qoton*.


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## ireney

I know this is not really helping much but the Greek word for cotton βαμάκι < βάμβαξ (vamvaki <vamvax) comes from the Persian pambak/pamba


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## Aoyama

Thank you for those informations. Below is a copy of part of one of my post, written as an answer to Flaminius own post, to be found in the japanese thread of this matter (see above discussion) :
As for *cotton* , _qutn_ in arabic, _qutna_ in hebrew, with the triliteral root QTN, it may be slightly different from *wata/wada* (ouate in french = surgical cotton, etymology from arabic clearly stated). Cotton being the raw material, wata/ouate being a kind of coarse finished product.
Spanish and portuguese use *algodon* or *algodaõ*, clearly showing also the arabic origin .


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## Aoyama

I also found that*  ouate* is* guata* is spanish. Interesting because we know that phonetically, *gu* = *w (guerra/guerre = war, Guillaume= William/ Wilhelm, ward=guard, warranty=guaranty *etc). So now, where does *guata* in spanish come from ?


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## cherine

If you're willing to accept a very wild guess... I'd say that guata itself came from qutn (Some Arabic speakers pronounce the "q" letter "g") I don't know how the Arabs in Spain used to pronounce the "q", but the similarity between *guata* and *qutn* caught my attention.

Again, this is only guessing. Nothing academic or very serious here.


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## Aoyama

Thank you for your reflexion. 
The problem is that phonetically, *qu* (which is pronounced in arabic as *"qoo"* -q being a basic consonnant, _iraqi_ etc, different from latin *qu*, which combines with vowels as in _aqua, quid, quorum etc)._
*Qu* in arabic (different from *gu*, in fact more like *g**u*) can not end up changing into *w* , I would think.


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## Aoyama

> *Wadd´a en arabe veut dire pièce de coton. Donc je m´aventure à dire que l´origine des deux mots est arabe.
> 
> *


*
I have received a very interesting post by Terepere, from the spanish forum, see above. It goes exactly in the direction I am looking for.
Translation in english (if need be) : 
Wadd'a means a piece [of cloth] of cotton in arabic. I therefore venture to say that both words are coming from arabic. 
Here, I will add that probably only one word is coming from arabic, that is guata or ouate . Coton, algodon etc come from QUTN.*


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## Lugubert

> Wadd´a en arabe


I don't doubt it, but I haven't found any Arabic cotton related wd- or wD- word in my dictionaries (including Wehr and al-Mawrid) or any translation of wad/Watte/vadd etc. resembling such a word.

The Spanish gua- makes perfect sense: think of all the river names like Guadalquivir < Wadi al-kabir 'the big river'.


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## Outsider

Or _guerra_, from _wirro_, but this is a Germanic word. Could the origin of _guata_ be Germanic?...


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## Aoyama

> The Spanish gua- makes perfect sense: think of all the river names like Guadalquivir < Wadi al-kabir 'the big river'.


Right ! Good exemple of gua=wa (though normally this applies mainly in old frank -germanic-).
But then, *wadd'a* would not exist ? I remember very well having seen somewhere the same _root_ for *ouate* in french ...
I'd like to know what the word is in portuguese, could be that the word *guata* came in japanese through the portuguese and that the pronounciation reversed itself to *wata *in japanese ... ?

No, not from germanic, as cotton did not come from that part of the world. You may help, seeing my other post . Arigato/obligado ...


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## Outsider

Aoyama said:


> Arigato/obrigado ...


_Douitashimashite._ 

I did not know this word. I looked it up in a dictionary (link here), but did not find it, and a Google search did not turn up anything, either.


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## terepere

Hi everyone!

If river wad- became gua- in Spanish as it is commonly known (Guadalquivir,Guadalajara, Guadiana) it is only natural that wadd´a became "guata". I keep searching for an authorised opinion on the matter: I have found guata among several lists of "arabisms" used in Spanish. But it seems that no one has ever written a thesis on the subject!!

Interesting theory about the Portuguese taking the word and the cotton into Japan from India.


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## psxws

to revive an old thread:

I think that ouate, etc. does come from a Germanic source. See for example:

http://books.google.com/books?id=OH...um=4&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=vata&f=false

which links it to OHG wat, a weed, garment.

The explanations on wiktionary for ouate and related were not satisfactory . On the French project, for example:

De l’arabe wadd’a (« mettre », employé au sens de « garnir un vêtement ») mais l’hypothèse est encore mal fondée [1] car les mots de l’espagnol qui en dérivent (bata et guata) le sont tardivement.

(Pretty much the reason I wasn't convinced of it either)

It gives as related the German Watte, which (on the English wiktionary) gives the etymology as Dutch watten. Ultimately I think it is all derived from that Germanic root. As to the reasoning that cotton doesn't come from that part of the world: that's not that relevant because the word could originally have referred to something else, in this example a weed, and then later came to be applied to cotton.

I think this is much more satisfactory than the alleged connection to Arabic for ouate specifically. Cotton and algodon obviously come from Arabic, however.

And the reason I even looked into this is because apparently ouate is the source for the word bata in Spanish. Interesting.


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## Aoyama

Yes, thank you for reviving this (somewhat) old thread, that after some debate, didn't come to a definite conclusion.
I follow you on some German connection (Watte and also English wad) which would refer more to the function or the aspect than to the actual thing.
But let's not forget that the primary aim of my question/thread was to find out where from and how did the word "wata"[men] _come into Japanese_. _Men_ comes from Chinese _mian_ (_wata _does not exist in Chinese). I had thought that there could have been a link with the Silk Road, Moslem and Arabic traders having come to China through this route ,around the 8th - 11th century, roughly the period when the word entered Japanese. So, two possible routes, by land (Silk Road, Moslem traders, many from Syria, Irak and Persia), or by sea, Arabic travelers possible but more likely Portuguese or Spaniards (Dutch, English and Germans came later, in the 18th century), the problem being that in that case, it would be the end of the 16th century ...


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