Notes
WT rgya, glossed in Jäschke (p. 104) as “seal, stamp, mark, sign, token” is perhaps the origin of this ethnonym, which has somehow come to refer both to China and India, and by extension to European colonials in India. Jäschke observes (p. 106) that some scholars of his day derived it from feringhi, a general term for Europeans used since the Crusades, deriving ultimately from ‘Frank, France, French.’
The Qiangic/rGyalrongic forms all seem to be loans from Tibetan.
Reflexes & cognates41 reflexes · 4 subgroups
2.1.2.1Tibetan14
3.2Qiangic20
3.3rGyalrongic2
3.3.1rGyalrong5
rGyalrong (Maerkang)rɟjɐ rəkmorpheme n‘Chinese (Han)’rGyalrong rɟjɐ rək evidently a borrowing from a Tibetan binome (cf. WT rgya rigs), with the second element meaning ‘lineage, tribe, ethnic group’.Huang and Dai 92 TBL: 0165.11
Cite this entry
STEDT etymon #5667,
*r-gya ‘CHINESE’.Stable link:
https://larc-iu.github.io/stedt/etymon/5667Data: STEDT v1.0 (2017). Accessed: [date].
References: JAM
BibTeX
@misc{stedt-5667,
title = {{*r-gya 'CHINESE'}},
author = {STEDT},
year = {2017},
note = {Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus (STEDT) v1.0, etymon #5667},
url = {https://larc-iu.github.io/stedt/etymon/5667}
}