Σῖναι

• Θῖναι (Thînai), Θῖνα (Thîna)

Of uncertain etymology, but probably from Sanskrit चीन (Cina, “China”), possibly via Arabic اَلصِّين‎ (aṣ-ṣīn, “China; the Chinese”) and usually held to derive from Old Chinese 秦 (*Dzin, “Qin”).

Σῖναι • (Sînai) m pl (genitive Σῑνῶν); first declension

1. (culture) A people of East Asia usually identified as the southern Chinese: the Cantonese, Vietnamese, and other Yue peoples reached via the maritime Silk Road to Panyu (Guangzhou), not known at the time to be related to the Seres reached by the overland route to Chang'an (Xi'an).
   • 1878, Thomas Rawson Birks translating Franz Delitzsch's citation of Neumann in his Commentary on the Book of Isaiah, p. 247:

     The name Θῖναι, Strabo, Σῖναι, Ptol., Τζίνιτζα, Kosmas, did not obtain currency first from the founder of the dynasty Tsin; but, long before this, Tsin was the name of a feudal kingdom in Shensi, one of the western provinces of the Sinese land, and Feitsa, the first feudal King of Tsin, began to reign as early as b.c. 897.

2. (geography) Their homeland in southern China: Guangdong and northern Vietnam.
3. (geography) Their chief city.

• (early medieval): Τζίνιστα (Tzínista); Τζίνιτζα (Tzínitza) (rare)

• English: Sino-, Sinese
• Latin: Sinae, Sina, Sino-

• (modern China): Κίνα (Kína)

• Thinae in William Smith, editor (1854, 1857) A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, volume 1 & 2, London: Walton and Maberly