All about coffee by William H. Ukers

DEALING WITH THE ETYMOLOGY OF COFFEE _Origin and translation of the word from the Arabian into various languages--Views of many writers_ The history of the word coffee involves several phonetic difficulties. The European languages got the name of the beverage about 1600 from the original Arabic [Arabic] _qahwah_, not directly, but through its Turkish form, _kahveh_. This was the name, not of the plant, but the beverage made from its infusion, being originally one of the names employed for wine in Arabic. Sir James Murray, in the _New English Dictionary_, says that some have conjectured that the word is a foreign, perhaps African, word disguised, and have thought it connected with the name Kaffa, a town in Shoa, southwest Abyssinia, reputed native place of the coffee plant, but that of this there is no evidence, and the name _qahwah_ is not given to the berry or plant, which is called [Arabic] _bunn_, the native name in Shoa being _bun_. Contributing to a symposium on the etymology of the word coffee in _Notes and Queries_, 1909, James Platt, Jr., said: The Turkish form might have been written _kahvé_, as its final _h_ was never sounded at any time. Sir James Murray draws attention to the existence of two European types, one like the French _café_, Italian _caffè_, the other like the English _coffee_, Dutch _koffie_. He explains the vowel _o_ in the second series as apparently representing _au_, from Turkish _ahv_. This seems unsupported by evidence, and the _v_ is already represented by the _ff_, so on Sir James's assumption _coffee_ must stand for _kahv-ve_, which is unlikely. The change from _a_ to _o_, in my opinion, is better accounted for as an imperfect appreciation. The exact sound of a in Arabic and other Oriental languages is that of the English short U, as in "cuff." This sound, so easy to us, is a great stumbling-block to other nations. I judge that Dutch _koffie_ and kindred forms are imperfect attempts at the notation of a vowel which the writers could not grasp. It is clear that the French type is more correct. The Germans have corrected their _koffee_, which they may have got from the Dutch, into _kaffee_. The Scandinavian languages have adopted the French form. Many must wonder how the _hv_ of the original so persistently becomes _ff_ in the European equivalents. Sir James Murray makes no attempt to solve this problem. Virendranath Chattopádhyáya, who also contributed to the _Notes and Queries_ symposium, argued that the _hw_ of the Arabic _qahwah_ becomes sometimes _ff_ and sometimes only _f_ or _v_ in European translations because some languages, such as English, have strong syllabic accents (stresses), while others, as French, have none. Again, he points out that the surd aspirate _h_ is heard in some languages, but is hardly audible in others. Most Europeans tend to leave it out altogether. Col. W.F. Prideaux, another contributor, argued that the European languages got one form of the word coffee directly from the Arabic _qahwah_, and quoted from Hobson-Jobson in support of this: _Chaoua_ in 1598, _Cahoa_ in 1610, _Cahue_ in 1615; while Sir Thomas Herbert (1638) expressly states that "they drink (in Persia) ... above all the rest, _Coho_ or _Copha_: by Turk and Arab called _Caphe_ and _Cahua_." Here the Persian, Turkish, and Arabic pronunciations are clearly differentiated. 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 (Nakil Sumara), 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-Shadil) 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 from _kahvah_ 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) has _coho_ 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) has _cohoo_, 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 _o_ instead of _a_, and _f_ instead of _h_.