Khitai

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An archaic name for China, derived from the Khitan people who ruled part of northern China centuries ago
2. A historical term used in older writing to refer to the country now known as China
3. The obsolete designation for China, linked to the Khitan nomads whose empire gave the name its origin

Etymology: Khitai is the old English-language name for China, and it reaches English through a long chain of transcriptions rather than a native Chinese word. The name traces back to the Khitan people, a nomadic group of Mongolic-speaking origin who ruled northern China as the Liao dynasty from the early tenth century. Their name was carried westward and eastward through neighbouring languages, and the form "Kitai" is the one English picked up from earlier travel writing about the region. The spelling "khitai" is a variant of that earlier "Kitai", shaped by Arabic and Persian sources and by the way those languages transcribed the Khitan name. Those sources, passed on through medieval travellers and Central Asian trade, gave Europeans a sense of a distant, wealthy realm to the east, and the name came to stand for China in that imagined geography.