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jinn

Arabic jinn are spirits made of smokeless fire, a collective with the singular jinnī. English took jinn in the 1680s, but the familiar genie is a different word: French translators used Latin genius for the jinnī because it sounded alike.

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The story you may have heard

Genie is often taken as the English form of jinnī, and jinn as a relative of Latin genius. The two words are unrelated (Arabic j-n-n 'hidden' and Latin gignere 'to beget'). Genie is the Latin word, which French translators chose to stand for the jinnī because the sounds matched.

The road to English

From Arabic to French, English

From Arabic to Ottoman Turkish, Turkish

630 CEArabic

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

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