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Arabic has had a tremendous influence on Spanish (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_language_influence_on...) which shows up occasionally in English. My personal favorite is that California is derived from Khalif, a Muslim Ruler (same word that Daesh uses to refer to their leader today).

In 1917, Ruth Putnam printed an exhaustive account of the work performed up to that time. She wrote that both Calafia and California most likely came from the Arabic word khalifa which means steward[6] or leader. The same word in Spanish was califa, easily made into California to stand for "land of the caliph" خلیف, or Calafia to stand for "female caliph" خلیفه .[7]

Maltese is another language that has a surprising amount of Arabic influence. The way they say their numbers is almost exactly the same as Arabic.

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> Maltese is another language that has a surprising amount of Arabic influence. The way they say their numbers is almost exactly the same as Arabic.

Maltese is a lot like English in that it has so many substrata that you have to look at it very closely to see where it came from.

Maltese is actually a direct descendant of Arabic, but it has been so heavily influenced by multiple Indo-European languages that 2/3 of its vocabulary has been replaced by words from Italian, Sicilian, English, and possibly others.

Compare this with how English is a West Germanic language but it has multiple substrata from Old Norse, French, and Latin influences.

> California is derived from Khalif, a Muslim Ruler (same > word that Daesh uses to refer to their leader today).

Not really. That was the invention of Edward Everett Hale (a theologian with no linguistic training, who died 100 years ago).

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_California

Did you actually check the link you posted. Because he is quoting from there.

> Maltese is another language that has a surprising amount of Arabic influence. The way they say their numbers is almost exactly the same as Arabic.

Not too surprising because Maltese is descendant from Arabic and would probably be considered an Arabic dialect except for cultural factors like religion and alphabet.

"According to another theory, the term could derive from the Old Spanish Calit Fornay, an alteration of the Latin Calida Fornax, meaning hot furnace" This is the one I've always heard, the Khalif origin is new to me - and very interesting.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_California#Altera...

Wow, I did not know that California is derived from Khalif, even though I am familiar with the term.

Chess in another example. If memory serves, "Checkmate" was derived from the Arabic "Sheikh maat" (the Sheikh has died).

Shah maat, actually, and it came from Farsi/Persian, not Arabic. Shah is Farsi for king.

Edit: The word chess itself also derives from shah. According to Wiktionary [0], it comes from Old French eschés, the plural of eschec, which comes from Vulgar Latin (scaccus* being the unattested reconstruction), which comes from Arabic shah, which finally comes from Farsi shah.

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chess

I see thanks for the clarification.

That makes it clearer where the German "Schach" probably came from. I wondered about it when I learned that word.

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