Dr. F. Hirth, again (Journ. R. Geog. Soc. i. 260), advocates the quasi-Chinese origin of the word. Dr. Hirth has found the word T'ai (and also with the addition of fung, 'wind') to be really applied to a certain class of cyclonic winds, in a Chinese work on Formosa, which is a re-issue of a book originally published in 1694. Dr. Hirth thinks t'ai as here used (which is not the Chinese word ta or tai, 'great,' and is expressed by a different character) to be a local Formosan term; and is of opinion that the combination t'ai-fung is "a sound so near that of typhoon as almost to exclude all other conjectures, if we consider that the writers using the term in European languages were travellers distinctly applying it to storms encountered in that part of the China Sea." Dr. Hirth also refers to F. Mendes Pinto and the passages (quoted below) in which he says tufão is the Chinese name for such storms. Dr. Hirth's paper is certainly worthy of much more attention than the scornful assertion of Sir John Barrow, but it does not induce us to change our view as to the origin of typhoon.
Observe that the Port. tufão distinctly represents ṭūfān and not t'ai-fung, and the oldest English form 'tuffon' does the same, whilst it is not by any means unquestionable that these Portuguese and English forms were first applied in the China Sea, and not in the Indian Ocean. Observe also Lord Bacon's use of the word typhones in his Latin below; also that ṭūfān is an Arabic word, at least as old as the Koran, and closely allied in sound and meaning to τυφών, whilst it is habitually used for a storm in Hindustani. This is shown by the quotations below (1810-1836); and Platts defines ṭūfān as "a violent storm of wind and rain, a tempest, a typhoon; a flood, deluge, inundation, the universal deluge" etc.; also ṭūfānī, "stormy, tempestuous ... boisterous, quarrelsome, violent, noisy, riotous."
Little importance is to be attached to Pinto's linguistic remarks such as that quoted, or even to the like dropt by Couto. We apprehend that Pinto made exactly the same mistake that Sir John Barrow did; and we need not wonder at it, when so many of our countrymen in India have supposed [hackery] to be a Hindustani word, and when we find even the learned H. H. Wilson assuming [tope] (in the sense of 'grove') to be in native Hindustani use. Many instances of such mistakes might be quoted. It is just possible, though not we think very probable, that some contact with the Formosan term may have influenced the modification of the old English form tuffon into typhoon. It is much more likely to have been influenced by the analogies of monsoon, simoom; and it is quite possible that the Formosan mariners took up their (unexplained) t'ai-fung from the Dutch or Portuguese.
On the origin of the Ar. word the late Prof. Robertson-Smith forwarded the following note:
"The question of the origin of Ṭūfān appears to be somewhat tangled.
"Τυφῶν, 'whirlwind, waterspout,' connected with τῦφος seems pure Greek; the combination in Baal-Zephon, Exod. xiv. 2, and Sephóni, the northern one, in Joel, ii. 20, suggested by Hitzig, appears to break down, for there is no proof of any Egyptian name for Set corresponding to Typhon.
"On the other hand Ṭūfān, the deluge, is plainly borrowed from the Aramaic. Tūfān, for Noah's flood, is both Jewish, Aramaic and Syriac, and this form is not borrowed from the Greek, but comes from a true Semitic root ṭūf 'to overflow.'
"But again, the sense of whirlwind is not recognised in classical Arabic. Even Dozy in his dictionary of later Arabic only cites a modern French-Arabic dictionary (Bocthor's) for the sense, Tourbillon, trombe. Bistání in the Moḥít el Moḥít does not give this sense, though he is pretty full in giving modern as well as old words and senses. In Arabic the root ṭūf means: 'to go round,' and a combination of this idea with the sense of sudden disaster might conceivably have given the new meaning to the word. On the other hand it seems simpler to regard this sense as a late loan from some modern form of τυφών, typho, or tifone. But in order finally to settle the matter one wants examples of this sense of ṭūfān."
[Prof. Skeat (Concise Dict. s.v.) gives: "Sometimes claimed as a Chinese word meaning 'a great wind' ... but this seems to be a late mystification. In old authors the forms are tuffon, tuffoon, tiphon, &c.—Arab. ṭūfān, a hurricane, storm. Gk. τυφών, better τυφώς, a whirlwind. The close accidental coincidence of these words in sense and form is very remarkable, as Whitney notes.">[
c. A.D. 160.—"... dies quidem tandem illuxit: sed nichil de periculo, de saevitiâve remissum, quia turbines etiam crebriores, et coelum atrum et fumigantes globi, et figurae quaedam nubium metuendae, quas τυφῶνας vocabant, impendere, imminere, et depressurae navem videbantur."—Aul. Gellius, xix. 2.