I hate to be -that- Greek, but the word typhoon in English is arguably either Greek or Arabic in origin. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=typhoon
May the mocking commence.
May the mocking commence.
a) 台 is the simplified version of 颱 in modern Chinese
b) there is nothing in the entry that suggests it means "great" or "big", and that, in fact, the one character translates as "typhoon"
Also, if you check out the Japanese wikipedia page for 台風, you'll find that the Japanese spelled it 颱風 up until 1956. There's also a rational for the 台風 spelling suggesting that it may have meant that typhoons were great winds that came from the direction of Taiwan, which is why the 台 character was used (although none of the suggested etymologies are yet proven).
As for the meanings of "great" or "big", the OED and etymonline entries actually refer to a different character, 大, from the Cantonese pronunciation of 大風 (IPA: taːifʊŋ).
The Japanese and Chinese etymology of 颱風 is as convoluted as the English one that _delirium mentions above in a previous comment. It may have originated as a Western borrowing, be related to Taiwan as you have suggested, or be related to Cantonese 大風; it may have perhaps even been influenced by multiple sources.
Further, you asserted that 「台」 was adopted into Japanese as a simplification of 「颱」, which I've shown to be false (it was adopted into Japanese as-is and wasn't simplified until 1956, and was also simplified in the same way in Chinese), yet people continue to upvote your incorrect assertion and downvote mine. Not that I hold that against you; you seem reasonable enough. But it does make me wonder what people's motivations would be.
- skosh
- bokeh (a photography term referring to a certain kind of blur in English)
- rickshaw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_magnate#Etymology
The borrowing pre-dates the Hepburn romanization system which wasn't developed until the 1880's.