Mandarin

A Mandarin was a bureaucrat in imperial China, and also in the monarchist days of Vietnam where the system of Imperial examinations and scholar-bureaucrats was adopted under Chinese influence. The English term comes from the Portuguese mandarim ('Mandar' in Portuguese means 'to order around' or 'send,' in turn, from the Latin 'mandar,' which has the same meaning; cf. mandate) or Dutch mandarijn, from Malay məntəri, from Sanskrit mantrin (Devanagar... more

A Mandarin was a bureaucrat in imperial China, and also in the monarchist days of Vietnam where the system of Imperial examinations and scholar-bureaucrats was adopted under Chinese influence. The English term comes from the Portuguese mandarim ('Mandar' in Portuguese means 'to order around' or 'send,' in turn, from the Latin 'mandar,' which has the same meaning; cf. mandate) or Dutch mandarijn, from Malay məntəri, from Sanskrit mantrin (Devanagari: मंत्री) (meaning councilor or minister). The term is also used to refer to the northern spoken variety of Chinese because it was the language used among officials during the Ming and Qing dynasties. According to Malaysian Royal Professor Ungku Abdul Aziz, the term originated when the Portuguese living in Malacca during the Malacca Sultanate wanted to meet with the higher officials in China, and used the term "menteri", but with an added "n" due to their poor grasp of the language, to refer to higher officials. An alternative theory is that... less