tabby

Tabby comes from French tabis, borrowed from Arabic ʕattābiyy, which referred to a type of waved silk. That fabric took its name from al-ʕattābiyya, a quarter of Baghdad named for a Prince ʕattāb, where the silk was made.

The word originally described a rippled, watered silk fabric before it came to describe the striped, wavy pattern seen on certain cats' fur.

Taffeta shares a similar path — it's another silk fabric name, though it comes from the Persian tâfta rather than Arabic.