Sugar has origins in ancient India where it was known as 'sharkara' in Sanskrit[1]. For reasons I haven't been able to figure out, some modern Indian languages

Sugar has origins in ancient India where it was known as 'sharkara' in Sanskrit[1]. For reasons I haven't been able to figure out, some modern Indian languages (like Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi) call it 'cheeni' which is the same word to refer to someone as Chinese. Other languages use variations of the Sanskrit 'sakhar', 'sakkare' [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sugar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sugar