2244: turban and tulip Feb 5, 2021

The words 'turban' and 'tulip are related, loaned to European languages through Ottoman Turkish دلبند‎ (tülbent), but initially the word was from Persian دلبند‎ (dolband). These two English words are clearly related in shape‚ hence the original meaning in Persian, but not so clearly in phonology. In Italian, the word for 'tulip' in 'tulipano' retaining the '-an' ending, but this was dropped in Germanic languages, being very similar to some of the most common suffixes. Likewise, it isn't exactly clear what caused the change of -l- to -r- in 'turban', but it likely happened in a even before it was borrowed into any Romance language.