The Etymology of Lapis
Lapis lazuli is one of the great geographic etymologies. Latin lapis simply means stone — a generic word — but in medieval Latin it was paired with lazuli, from Arabic lāzaward, originally a place name: the famous deep-blue stone was mined in only one location in the medieval world, the remote Sar-e-Sang valley of Badakhshan in what is now Afghanistan, where Persian-speaking traders called the mineral lāzhuward. The colour and the place became synonymous; the Latin compound lapis lazuli (stone of lazhuward) was simply stone of that famous blue. English borrowed the full term from medieval Latin around 1400 and shortened it to lapis only by about 1900. The same Persian root produced a separate word: azure. The Arabic lāzaward entered Old French as l'azur, where speakers misanalysed the initial l- as the definite article and lopped it off, leaving azur. Two English words from one Afghan mine.