topaz [ME] In the Middle Ages topaz was used of any yellow gem, such as yellow sapphire. It reached English via Old French topace, topaze and Latin topazus from Greek topazos. This does not seem to be a Greek word, and there has been debate about its ultimate origin. The Roman writer Pliny, who is not to be relied on, says it was named after a remote island in the Red or Arabian Sea where it was mined, and that the island got its name because it was hard to find, but this is probably a folk etymology based on Greek topazein ‘to divine, to try to locate’. Others have suggested that it is connected with the Sanskrit tapas, ‘heat, fire’.