An atlas of wandering words

1025 words from Sanskrit, Arabic, Nahuatl, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew and dozens more languages — traced hop by hop across the map, with an honest grade on every link.

Try tea, chocolate, kangaroo, algebra, amen — or, going the other way, balagan.

Arabic exportsFood & drinkTrade, money & letters

sugar

Sanskrit śarkarā meant 'grit, gravel' before it named crystals of sugar; the word rode the sugar trade through Persian and Arabic, Arab plantations in Sicily and Spain carried it into every European language, and Greek physicians, who had taken it straight from India, passed it on to Russian. Atlantic plantations took it on to Brazil, Mexico and Haiti.

Weakest linkProbable

The road to English

From Sanskrit to Pali

From Sanskrit to Prakrit, Hindi

From Sanskrit to Malayalam, Portuguese, Indian English

From Sanskrit to Koine Greek, Latin, New Latin

From Koine Greek to Byzantine Greek, Old East Slavic, Russian

From Middle Persian to Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Turkish

From Ottoman Turkish to Serbo-Croatian

From Arabic to Old Spanish, Spanish, Mexican Spanish

From Spanish to Tagalog

From Arabic to Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese

From Arabic to Italian

From Arabic to Medieval Hebrew

From Arabic to Swahili

From Medieval Latin to Middle High German, German

From German to Polish

From German to Swedish

From Old French to French, Haitian Creole

From English to American English

1000 BCESanskrit

Hops are evenly spaced; labels show the year each form is first attested.