Etymograph

English

Kunlun

Kunlun comes from Mandarin 崑崙.

  1. Mandarinmodern崑崙Kūnlún
  2. Englishearliest quotation 1625Kunlun

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed

Lineage

  1. Mandarinmodern崑崙Kūnlún
  2. Englishearliest quotation 1625Kunlun

Earliest quotation: 1625, Samuel Purchas, London: […] William Stansby for Henrie Fetherstone: “[…] the Yellow Riuer […] is the other famous…”

The story

From the Mandarin 崑崙 /昆仑 (Kūnlún) and 崑崙山／昆仑山 (Kūnlún Shān), with the character 山 (shān) being an ambiguous reference to any raised place, inclusive of islands, hills, mountains, and mountain ranges. The characters 崑崙 /昆仑 (Kūnlún) are phono-semantic compounds adding 山 (shān) as a semantic component (形旁 (xíngpáng)) to the characters 昆 (kūn) and 侖／仑 (lún), which were presumably also homophones for Kunlun in Old Chinese—Zhengzhang's reconstructed pronunciation being /*kuːn.run/—but leaving its further development or original meaning uncertain.uncertain The source flags this step as uncertain.

Every English word from Mandarin 崑崙

Today it means

name A mountain range in China forming the border between the Tarim Basin to its north and the Tibetan Plateau to its south, extending across the Chinese autonomous regions of Xinjiang and Tibet and province of Qinghai.

Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.

Etymograph / Mandarin 崑崙 / Kunlun

Shirt and support for this word