History

Etymology 

Practically every language derives its word for tea from China where it was first cultivated and prepared as an infusion.

Before 725 AD the Chinese had used many words for tea, mostly borrowed from other types of plants. This causes some uncertainty as to whether tea or some other plants are being discussed by the earliest authors.

The character t'u is presumed to have meant tea though also meant grass, rush, sow-thistle and bitter-cabbage. The book of songs which was written at the very latest in the 6 century BC reads:

"who say's the t'u is bitter;
it is as sweet as shepherd's purse"

Around 50 BC Wang Piu wrote of buying t'u from Wutu, a mountain in the Szechwan tea growing district. Four centuries later Emperor Ai Ti's father-in-law Wang Mang was a drinker of t'u.

"fragrant t'u superimposes the six passions the taste for it spreads over the entire Kingdom."
Chang Meng-young Tsin dynasty

"Kia, K'u t'u {bitter t'u} a small evergreen tree resembling the chi {Gardenia radicans.} A beverage is made from the leaves by boiling. Now the earliest gathering is called t'u the latest ming. Another name for the plant is ch'uen. The people of Shu {Szechwan} call it K'u t'u."
From a revision of the ancient Chinese dictionary Kuo P'o (265-317 AD)

Ming was another early name for tea. It reached the Yunnan from the word miang of the Siamese {Hakka dialect}. The Emperor Shen Nung known as the Divine Husbandsman" was said to have discovered tea when a leaf fell into his cup of boiled water around 2737 BC. Earliest accounts of the story from the Han dynasty (22-220 AD) use the word Ming.

Ch'a gradually became the word of choice. The t'u Ling {tea hills} of Hunan province became the Ch'a Ling as early as the Han dynasty. In 780 AD Lu Yu wrote the Ch'a Ching {The Classic of Tea} considered the world's first comprehensive work on the subject of tea. His use of the word Ch'a made it official. The character t'u lost a brush stroke to become ch'a, the Chinese ideograph for tea and nothing else.

With trade tea and it's name began to travel. The Turks were on the North Chinese border in their caravans by the end of the fifth century. The Arabs were trading with the Usbeck Tartars not long after that.

The Japanese imported their first tea-seeds along with the word Ch'a sometime during the eighth century. While overland caravans took it into Russia.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to enter China around 1516 adopting the word ch'a. However, when the Dutch first traded for tea it was in Bantam, Java where the Chinese merchants supplying the tea were from Amoy in Fukien province. Amoy dialect used the word t'e (Tay) which was adopted by all following European traders.

Thus the English word tea originally pronounced tay came from the Dutch.

The English East India Company's records of 1664 used the word "thea" which by 1668 had been changed to "tey". It was a totally new word in English and the rest of Europe's languages.

First spelled "tea" in 1660 the pronunciation remained "tay" until the middle of the eighteenth century when, as we see below, "tee" was preferred.

"Here thou great Anna! whom three realms obey' Dost sometimes counsel take-and sometimes tea."
Rape of the Lock by Pope 1711

"One day in July last at tea, And in the house of Mrs. P..."
The Trial of Sarah by Thomas Moore 1750

"A cup o' cha"

Cha made it back to the English language through the slang of cockney sailors.