Is it tea, tee, chai or chay??

As you unwind with a comforting cup of tea, it’s often overlooked that wars have been waged over this very beverage. It ignites passionate debates among families and colleagues alike. The questions arise: Should it be savoured plain or with a dash of milk?

Can one indulge it with honey or rich butter? Is it an afternoon delight, as embraced by Europeans, or does it find its best moment in the morning, as cherished in China? Remarkably, this divisive elixir has, throughout history, woven the threads of diverse cultures into a tapestry of shared experience.

So another important question might hit you: “How tea or chai got its name? And more fascinatingly, why does every part of the world use a variant of “tea” or the “cha” sound to describe this drink. To understand why, let’s delve into some interesting historical tales.

Etymology of tea

Before the 8th century, there was no specific word or character for tea. It was only during the Tang Dynasty in the late 8th century that Tao Lu Yu authored the seminal work on tea, known as the Cha Ching or The Tea Classic. In this text, he introduced the character 茶, which evolved from the earlier version of tu 荼 but with one horizontal stroke removed.

And as tea consumption grew in popularity across China, the character 茶 became more widespread. Given China’s vast size and diverse regional dialects, the pronunciation of 茶 varied. For instance, in Guangdong Province, it was pronounced as cha, in Shantou as te, and in Fujian Province as ta. In the northern regions along the Yangtze River, it was pronounced as zhou or cha.

In both the major Cantonese and Mandarin dialects, 茶 is pronounced as ch’a, and it is also used to describe the first flush harvest of tea. In the Amoy Min Nan dialect spoken in and around Xiamen (Amoy) port, 茶 is pronounced as tê, believed to have originated from the older name tu.

The journey of fascinating names 

The name of this popular beverage in other parts of the world depended whether it left China by land or by sea. It turns out that the land route for the tea trade was via the Silk Road. As the Silk Road weaved through Asia, cha became chai in India, chay in Russian, shay in Arabic, and chai in North Africa. In Japan, tea was introduced by Buddhist monks who had studied in Central China so it’s Ocha in Japanese.

Moreover, as the Min Nan dialect of Chinese is spoken in the coastal region of Fujian, so tea is called chate over there. 

The Dutch touch

When this tea travelled to Europe, it was mainly traded by the Dutch through the port of Amoy where the Amoy word te was pronounced as tay. The Dutch changed it to thee which came to be known as tea or tee in English, the in French, thee in German and te in Italian, Spanish, and Hungarian. In Sri Lanka it’s te, it’s te neer in Tamilan, tii in Maori, and tee in South Africa. The root te also reached Indonesia – a former Dutch colony – where in Javanese the word is pronounced teh. However, there is one exception and that is the United States where they call it chai tea.

So whether you refer to it as tea, cha or by any other name, it’s evident that this beverage has been a unifying force, bridging nations and cultures. Whether you prefer it steeped from a teabag or want to enjoy it as loose-leaf, with or without milk, in the morning or the afternoon, the way you utter ‘tea’ connects you to a shared experience embraced by billions around the world.