satin

Satin comes from French satin, which traces back to "Zaitun," the Arabic name for the Chinese city of Quanzhou. That name came from Arabic زَيْتُون (zaytūn, "olive"), chosen as a phono-semantic match for Chinese 刺桐 ("coral tree"), part of the old name for Quanzhou, "coral tree town."

The word began as a place name for a Chinese port city, then shifted through Arabic and French to describe the smooth, lustrous fabric that was traded from or associated with that city.

The Arabic word zaytūn, meaning "olive," was chosen for its sound resemblance to the Chinese name, linking satin's history to the word for the fruit — though the meanings themselves don't overlap.