Farangi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Farangi is a term for foreigners in Persian, possibly linked to the Franks. The word in Arabic (faranji or ferenji) is similar and the word Farangi also appears in Urdu and Hindi in reference to foreigners. It can have a derogatory connotation.
Of trivial interest is the fact that in French Polynesia the word for a white man is 'farani' (from 'francais'), whereas the Indonesians used to refer to their colonisers (the Dutch/Hollanders) as 'orang blanda.' Orang is 'man' (hence 'orang utan' - 'man of the forest', and Blanda is the phonic equivalent in Indonesian of 'Hollander').
In the far north and north-east of Australia the Aboriginal peoples also referred to white people as 'Bilanda.' Possibly they got this term from Indonesian fishermen who have fished in Australian waters for centuries.
Similarly, the Zulu word for the Boer colonisers is ama-Bulu ('ama' indicating a plural). Which only goes to show that people often adopt into their language a term for all foreigners related to the name of the tribe of a prominent invader or coloniser of their country (another example is the word 'Hun' which is still used derogatorily to denote aggressive descendants of Germanic tribes).
In colonial Sri Lanka, 'Parangi' was used to refer to both Portuguese people and to a form of syphilis called Yaws that was introduced by the Portuguese.
