Etymology: < Portuguese mandarim (1514; also mandarin ) < Malay menteri (see Mentri n.) or its etymon Sanskrit mantrī (see mantri n.). Compare French mandarin counsellor (1581), Chinese literary language (1603), and in figurative (and ironic) use denoting an influential person from the early 19th cent.; Spanish mantelines , plural (1590 in the source translated in quot. 1589 at sense 1a), Mandarines , plural (1590 in the source translated in quot. 1604 at sense 1a). In form mandorijn after Dutch mandarijn, mandorijn (1596).The change of t to d in Portuguese is perhaps due to influence from Portuguese mandar to order. The Sanskrit word was the usual term for a counsellor or minister of state in pre-Islamic India. It was widely adopted in South-East Asia, and especially in the Malay-speaking states. The Portuguese were the first to apply it to Chinese officials, for whom the Chinese term was guān (see Kuan n.). Johnson (1755) indicates the stress as falling on the final syllable. Webster (1828), and a number of other 19th-cent. dictionaries, both from Britain and the United States, give only this stress pattern and also transcribe the vowel of the final syllable as /iː/, a pronunciation still given as an alternative in the earlier editions of D. Jones, Eng. Pronouncing Dict. The pronunciation with a stressed final syllable with a short vowel is recorded as an alternative in British use from the late 20th cent. A form with secondary stress on the first syllable is recorded in Webster (1886), and transcriptions indicating primary stress on this syllable are found in the Cent. Dict. (1890) and many subsequent works, initially as one of two alternatives, but later as the norm.

Etymology: < Swedish mandarin (in mandarin apelsin ) in source ultimately translated in quot. 1771 at sense 1, probably a spec. application of Swedish mandarin mandarin n.¹ (also earliest attested in Swedish in Osbeck). The reason for the fruit being so named is not specified by Osbeck and is obscure: comparison of the fruit's colour with the yellow silk robes of mandarins has been suggested, although since Osbeck comments that the mandarin is the better kind of Chinese orange the alternative explanation that the name carries connotations of choiceness is perhaps more likely. Osbeck gives the Chinese name of the fruit as kamm (probably Chinese (Cantonese) gām loose-skinned orange; compare Chinese (Mandarin) gān). Compare French mandarine (1773). N.E.D. (1904) records also a pronunciation with a long vowel in the final syllable: compare note s.v. mandarin n.¹ (the two words are treated together in many dictionaries).