Etymology
Some modern authorities believe the word is derived from the Arabic word arak (عرق, arq), meaning 'distillate'. In the Middle East and Near East, the term arak is usually used for liquor distilled from grapes and flavored with anise. However, coconut 'arrack' is considered by some Muslims as a "loophole" in the prohibition against alcohol because it is made from neither grain nor fruit, thus allowing its consumption.
Unlike arak, the word arrack has been considered by old experts to derived from areca nut, a palm seed originating in India from the areca tree and used as the basis for many varieties of arrack. This tree is from a similar family as the Arrack tree of Japan. In 1838, Samuel Morewood's work on the histories of liquiors was published. On the topic of arrack he said:
| “ | The word arrack is decided by philologers to be of Indian origin ; and should the conjecture be correct, that it is derived from the areca-nut, or the arrack-tree, as Kcempfer calls it, J it is clear, that as a spirit was extracted from that fruit, the name was given to all liquors having similar intoxicating effects. The term arrack being common in eastern countries where the arts of civilized life have been so early cultivated, it is more reasonable to suppose that the Tartars received this word through their eastern connexions with the Chinese, or other oriental nations, than to attribute it to a derivation foreign to their language, or as a generic term of their own. The great source of all Indian literature, and the parent of almost every oriental dialect, is the Sanscrit, a language of the most venerable and unfathomable antiquity, though now confined to the libraries of the Brahmins, and solely appropriated to religious laws and records. Mr. Halhed, in the preface to his Grammar of the Bengal language, says, that he was astonished to find a strong similitude between the Persian, Arabian, and even the Latin and Greek languages, not merely in technical and metaphorical terms, which the mutation of refined arts or improved manners might have incidentally introduced, but in the very groundwork of language in monosyllables in the names of numbers, and the appellations which would be first employed on the immediate dawn of civilisation. Telinga is a dialect of the Sanscrit, in which the word areca is found, it is used by the Brahmins in writing Sancrit, and since to the latter all the other tongues of India are more or less indebted, the term areca, or arrack, may be fairly traced through the different languages of the East, so that the general use and application of this word in Asiatic countries cannot appear strange. To these considerations may be added, that in Malabar the tree which yields the material from which this oriental beverage is produced is termed areca, and, among the Tungusians, Calmucks, Kirghizes, and other hordes, koumiss, in its ardent state, is known by the general term, " Arrack or Rak." Klaproth says, that the Ossetians, (anciently Alans,) a Caucasian people, applied the word " Arak" to denote all distilled liquorsf a decided confirmation of the foregoing observations and opinions. | ” |
Regardless of the exact origin, arrack has come to symbolize a multitude of largely unrelated, distilled alcohols produced throughout Asia and the eastern Mediterranean. This is largely due to the proliferation of distillation knowledge throughout the Middle East during the 14th century. Each country named its own alcohol by using various Latin alphabet forms of the same word which was synonymous with distillation at the time (arak, araka, araki, ariki, arrack, arack, raki, raque, racque, rac, rak, araka).
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