mandarim

Mandarim in Portuguese comes from Malay menteri (minister, counselor), from Sanskrit mantrin (counselor, minister), from mantra (counsel, sacred text). When Portuguese traders reached China in the sixteenth century, they used their Malay-derived word mandarim for Chinese government officials. The Chinese officials did not call themselves mandarins — the term was imposed from outside, through a chain of languages that started in India and ended in Beijing.

The word mandarin was extended to the language these officials spoke. 'Mandarin Chinese' — guānhuà (官话, official speech) in Chinese — was the standardized court language used in administration. The Portuguese word for the official became the English word for the official's language. Today, Mandarin Chinese is the most spoken language in the world, with over 900 million native speakers. Its English name comes from Sanskrit via Malay via Portuguese.

The mandarin orange (Citrus reticulata) was named because its color resembled the orange robes worn by Chinese officials — or possibly because the fruit was associated with gifts presented to mandarins. The connection between the official and the orange is metaphorical: both are Chinese, both are orange, and both carry the Portuguese word. The fruit is called a mandarin in English. In Chinese, it is a jú (橘) or gān (柑).

In modern English, 'mandarin' has acquired a figurative meaning: a powerful bureaucrat, especially one who wields influence without accountability. 'The mandarins of Whitehall' names British senior civil servants. 'The mandarins of Wall Street' names financial elites. The Sanskrit counselor, the Portuguese official, and the English bureaucrat are all the same word — applied to power exercised from behind a desk.