The story
From Tanzania + -ite (suffix forming nouns denoting minerals or rocks), coined by Henry B. Platt, a vice president of the American jeweler Tiffany & Co. when it first marketed the gem in 1968: see the October 3, 1968, quotation.
First known use, by meaning
- from 1968 A trichroic violet-blue variety of the mineral zoisite mined in Tanzania, used as a gemstone.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.