An Etymological Study of Persian Names of Plants in English

The study of the penetration and spread of Persian words in other languages such as English is known as one of the notable issues. Despite its inevitable linguistic as well as cultural and historical significance, its various dimensions have been neglected in etymological studies. The etymological analysis and study of English words borrowed from Persian language represents that a considerable number of such words are related to the names of plants which were borrowed indirectly from Persian in different periods of time and in this process have undergone various changes such as phonetic and semantic ones including expansion, narrowing and change. Therefore, this study, which has been developed based on a comprehensive and systematic study of English words borrowed from Persian, aims at analyzing and describing twenty four words from at least forty words in this category which have been found on the basis of authentic materials and lexicons in the field of etymology. For each entry, some information about the origin, meaning, process of borrowing, intermediate languages, phonetic as well as semantic changes, and so forth have been systematically presented. In addition, to be more familiar with their use in Persian old texts and references, in some cases for some of the entries some data and examples have been provided. In cases that the words had entered other European languages, they are introduced as well.