The story
- Chinese · derived from高嶺土 /高岭土“Gaoling earth”
- French · borrowed fromkaolin
- English todaykaolin
From French kaolin, François Xavier d'Entrecolles's irregular romanization of the Mandarin pronunciation of Chinese 高嶺土 /高岭土 (gāolǐngtǔ, “Gaoling earth”), from 高嶺 /高岭 (Gāolǐng, “High Ridge”), a village in Fuliang County, Jingdezhen Prefecture, Jiangxi Province, that became Jingdezhen's primary source of this kind of clay during the early to mid-Qing dynasty.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.