Romanian words with strange origins: the sofa is a mosquito net, the bulb a beak, the plasterboard hides a city

All 73 words, by how they were born#

Every word below was checked in at least one Romanian dictionary and, for each foreign step, in a reference work for that step: usually a dictionary of the language it came from; otherwise the card names the source. Where the sources disagree, the word is marked disputed and the card says who holds what.

The Romanian dictionaries the cards name: DEX, the standard explanatory dictionary of Romanian (editions of 1998 and 2009); MDA2, the Romanian Academy’s smaller dictionary (2010); DEXI and NODEX, two other general dictionaries; CADE, an illustrated encyclopedic dictionary of 1926–1931; and the etymological dictionaries of Alexandru Ciorănescu, August Scriban (1939) and Lazăr Șăineanu.

Which Romanian words come from people’s names?#

• goblenthe Gobelins works in Paris, named after a family of dyers
• pantaloniPantalone, the Venetian merchant of the commedia dell’arte, whose hose ran down to his feet
• hopa-miticăhopa! (“up!”) and Mitică, the pet form of Dumitru
• jobenthe name of Jobin, a French hatter in Bucharest
• solomonifrom the name of King Solomon
• miticăthe pet form of Dumitru, made into a type by Caragiale
• pepeleaPepelea, the trickster of Romanian folk tales, kin of Păcală
• marghilomancoffee boiled in rum, named after a Marghiloman; three dictionaries, three men (two probably the same) (disputed)
• pazvangiuOsman Pazvantoğlu, the rebel of Vidin whose bands raided Wallachia
• îndreathe name of Saint Andrew, whose feast opens the month
• mioriticthe name of the ballad Miorița; “mioritic space” is a phrase of Lucian Blaga

Which Romanian words come from place names?#

• parizerGerman Pariser, “Parisian”; no source says what the sausage has to do with Paris
• cravatăFrench cravate, “Croat”: the neckcloth of Croatian horsemen
• blugiEnglish blue jeans; jean is the old name of Genoa
• faianțăFaenza, the town in Romagna known for its glazed pottery
• bascăFrench béret basque, “Basque beret”, with the beret left out
• bikiniBikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, known for the American atomic test of 1946
• brașoavăfrom the name of Brașov; the dictionaries give three reasons
• balamucMalamuc, the village near Gherghița where the mentally ill were taken in (disputed)

Which brands became ordinary Romanian words?#

• aragaza company’s initials plus gaz, gas; the dictionaries disagree about which company (disputed)
• frigideran American brand, Frigidaire, made from a Latin word for “cold room”
• termosthe Thermos brand, registered in 1904, from Greek thermós, “hot”
• nesNescafé cut in half: the first syllable of Henri Nestlé’s surname
• celofanthe Cellophane brand of the Swiss chemist Jacques Brandenberger
• pampersthe Procter & Gamble brand, which became “un pampers, doi pamperși” in Romanian
• cariocaa trade name; it matches the Italian Carioca brand, founded in 1956
• scoci3M’s Scotch tape; in the legend, “Scotch” meant “stingy”
• xeroxthe Xerox brand, from xerography, from Greek xērós, “dry”
• pixorigin disputed: English pick, a brand, or “uncertain” (disputed)
• föhna warm Alpine wind, from Latin favonius; FOEN was a brand in 1908
• rimelthe surname of Eugène Rimmel, a French-born perfumer who settled in London in 1834
• aspirinăthe German brand Aspirin: a- “without” + spiraea, meadowsweet
• yalăthe name of Linus Yale Jr., the American who patented his locks in 1861 and 1865
• adidașithe adidas brand: Adi Das[sler], the shoemaker of Herzogenaurach
• termopanthe American brand Thermopane, sealed double glazing
• rigipsRiga + Gips: the company’s first plasterboard factory, in Riga, 1938
• flita trade-name insecticide; “to give someone flit” probably comes from it
• drujbăthe Soviet chainsaw Дружба (Druzhba), “Friendship”, made in Perm from 1955
• inbusIn[nensechskantschlüssel] + B[auer] u[nd] S[chaurte], a German screw company
• claxonKlaxon, an American horn brand of 1908, probably on Greek klazein, “to roar”
• pecoPECO, the state firm that sold petrol under communism; what the letters stood for is unsettled (disputed)

Which objects are named after something else?#

• robinetFrench robinet, “little sheep”: early taps were often shaped like a sheep’s head
• cașcavalItalian caciocavallo, “cheese-horse”; nobody is sure why the horse
• cartofGerman Kartoffel, from Italian tartufolo: the potato is a “truffle”
• zahărGreek záhari, which goes back to Sanskrit śarkarā, “gravel”
• vanilieSpanish vainilla, “little pod”, from vaina, “sheath”
• taburetFrench tabouret, “little drum”; the first tabouret was a pincushion
• dulapTurkish dolap, from Persian dōl-āb, “bucket + water”: a water wheel
• canapeafrom Greek kōnōpeion, “mosquito net”
• jaluzeleFrench jalousie, “jealousy”: a lattice to see through without being seen
• papionFrench papillon, “butterfly”
• dosarFrench dossier, from dos, “back”: first the head of a bed (disputed)
• becFrench bec, “beak”: the tip of a gas burner, then the electric bulb

Which words were born from a mistake or from fake English?#

• smochingEnglish smoking, from smoking jacket, the jacket you smoked in at home; the evening sense is French
• sacouGerman Sakko, coined to look Italian, from German Sack (disputed)
• papuciTurkish papuç; Romanians took the -i for a plural and rebuilt a singular, papuc
• treningEnglish training, the activity; the English call the garment a tracksuit

Which Romanian words came from furthest away, or longest ago?#

• chibritTurkish kibrit, from Arabic, Aramaic and Akkadian: “sulphur”
• tipsieTurkish tepsi; Nişanyan takes it back, through Mongolian, to Chinese diézi, “wide dish” (disputed)
• ciocolatăItalian cioccolata, from Spanish, from a Nahuatl word, the language of the Aztecs
• tomatăFrench tomate, through Spanish, from Nahuatl tomatl
• ananasFrench ananas, from a Tupi-Guarani word of Brazil
• piperGreek pipéri, probably from Sanskrit pippalī, “long pepper”
• cadăfirst a vat; from Slavic or Latin, from Greek kádos, from Hebrew kad, “jar” (disputed)
• mangoPortuguese manga, from Tamil mān-kāy, “mango-tree fruit”
• ketchupEnglish ketchup, probably from a Chinese word for a fish sauce (disputed)
• telemeaTurkish teleme; Nişanyan ties it to a Mongolian word for “to spread” (disputed)
• cauciucFrench caoutchouc, from a language of Peru that is hard to identify
• cangurEnglish kangaroo, from Guugu Yimidhirr of Queensland: gangurru
• bumerangEnglish boomerang, the Port Jackson (Sydney) word, from an extinct language
• tabuPolynesian tapu, tabu, brought to Europe by Cook from Tonga in 1777
• tatuajTahitian tatau, brought back by Cook’s voyage in 1769
• dugheanăTurkish dükkân; Nişanyan takes it back to Sumerian dagana, “a stall”

How many dictionary words are the names of people, places and brands?#

The flat is a choice. The dictionary can be counted. In DEX ’98, the standard Romanian dictionary, as dexonline publishes it in its open data dump, 66 words have an etymology that points to a proper name with no suffix. Read one by one, 42 of them are the very name of a person (26) or a place (16); the rest are names of peoples, derivatives, or not names at all. Another 29 are given as a “trade name”. Words that DEX gives with a suffix on a name (băcăuan, “from Bacău”) are not counted; a few derivatives that slipped into the 66 are shown apart in the table. On the dexonline website, some of these entries (dunăre, stancă, măriuță) appear only under DEX ’09.

Of the 42 names of people and places, 15 come from Romania itself, and DEX gives them no route through another language: balamuc (the village of Malamuc), brașoavă (Brașov), breaza (a dance, after Breaza), chivuță (the woman who whitewashed houses, after Chivuța), cotnari (the wine of Cotnari), dunăre (“a great water”, after the Danube), joben (the hatter Jobin), marghiloman (coffee with rum), mitică (the flippant man), măriuță (the ladybird, after Măriuța), novac (the strong man of folk belief), penteleu (autumn cheese), pepelea (the prankster), stancă (the jackdaw, after Stanca) and vasilcă (the decorated pig’s head carried by carollers, after Vasile).

Wiktionary also has a category of brands that became ordinary Romanian words (21, among them drujbă, rigips, termopan, xerox) and one of words that look English or French but are not used that way in those languages (10, among them trening, living, golgheter).

How they were checked#

The list started from the etymologies in Wiktionary (the kaikki.org extract) and in DEX ’98, used only as an index. For each word, five separate research passes saved the dexonline page (DEX, MDA2, Ciorănescu, Scriban, Șăineanu, CADE, NODEX) and, for each step of the chain, the page in a reference work for that step: TLFi for French, DWDS for German, Treccani for Italian, Nişanyan for Turkish (and, through it, the Persian, Arabic, Aramaic, Akkadian, Sumerian and Mongolian steps), Vasmer for Russian, Etymonline for English (and the Sanskrit, Australian, Polynesian and Malay steps), TLFi also for the Nahuatl, Tupi, Tamil and Peruvian steps, company pages for brands. A program then found each quotation again in its saved file; a step it could not find was not published.

The categories were fixed before the research and changed three times, each change dated: trade names stay under Brands even when they hide a person or a place; föhn is a wind, not a god; objects with ordinary names stay in the flat and say “nothing strange”. Far away or long ago means that the oldest language in the chain is spoken more than 5,000 km from Bucharest, by Glottolog’s language points, or is a language of the ancient Near East (Akkadian, Sumerian, Aramaic, ancient Hebrew). Caiac, kayak, would have cleared the line by only 38 km; it is not in the game.

What was not done: no linguist has read the page. Etymonline and the Spanish dictionary were read through Internet Archive copies. Brand facts often come from company pages, not from trade mark registers.

Sources

• dexonline: DEX ’98 and ’09, MDA2, Ciorănescu (DER), Scriban, Șăineanu, CADE, NODEX, DN; the public dump of 3 September 2026, for the count.
• TLFi (CNRTL), DWDS (Pfeifer), Treccani, Nişanyan Sözlük, Etymonline, Vasmer, Triantafyllidis, Duden, Littré, the TDV encyclopedia.
• Glottolog 5.3 (CC BY 4.0), language points, for distances; Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA 4.0), as an index.
• Company pages of Thermos, Nestlé, Yale, adidas, Rigips, Procter & Gamble and 3M; the Migration Museum (London); Stelian Dumistrăcel, “Lumea cuvântului”, Ziarul Lumina, 2007; E1.ru, on the ZiD works in Perm; Radio Romania International, on the marghiloman.

More on the site

• A day in words (in Romanian): the Chinese emperor in your plate, a Persian glass, a Latin soul
• Your dictionary is French. You speak Latin.
• The sandwich and the cardigan: two lords, two eponyms
• In Latin, “to go” meant “to sink”
• The orange came twice
• Romanian words in other languages
• The Turkish words in Romanian: which left the books, which stayed in the house