Typhoon

Typhoons (and super-typhoons) have been wreaking havoc recently in Japan, Korea, and The Philippines. A typhoon and a hurricane are technically the same meteorological phenomenon, just occurring in different parts of the world. The word "typhoon" is exceedingly cross-cultural. When English-speakers first encountered these storms in India in the 1500s, they naturally borrowed the Urdu word for the phenomonon, tufan. For about 300 years, the British in India called them "touffans". Meanwhile, however, there was also a Chinese word for the same thing, tai fung (big wind). People who had more contact with China than with India tended to use this word or something like it instead of the Urdu word. As luck would have it, the ancient Greek word for "whirlwind" was tuphon. For several centuries from the Renaissance onward, there was a tendency to believe that all words came from Latin or Greek (even if designating a Pacific Ocean phenomenon!), so people messed around with these Urdu and Chinese words  to make them look more like the Greek word, until we finally ended up with "typhoon" in the mid-19th century.