Thinking about the weird quasi-false cognate status of the words azure (English) and aozora (Japanese). They look alike, right? It’s not just me. And they both refer to blue skies or at least the color of a blue sky.

Anyway, these two words aren’t related at all. The Japanese word has a really straightforward construction and I assume etymology. It’s literally just 青 “blue” + 空 “sky”. Standard readings on both kanji.

The English etymology is wild though. It’s Yet Another loan word from Arabic, but it’s so old that it doesn’t have the “al-“ prefix that’s a tell of more modern loan words like algebra:

Middle English (denoting a blue dye): from Old French asur, azur, from medieval Latin azzurum, azolum, from Arabic al ‘the’ + lāzaward (from Persian lāžward ‘lapis lazuli’).

(Also check out how that leading L got dropped because it was grouped together with the L in al! It’s like how “a napron” became “an apron”.)

By the way, there are a few actual loanwords from Japanese in English beyond the obvious ones like sushi or haiku. The one I always think of is honcho.