soy [L17th] The earliest recorded example of soy sauce in English describes it as ‘the choicest of all sauces’. Soy or shoy is a Japanese shortening of sho-yu from Chinese shi-yu from shi ‘salted, fermented beans’ and yu ‘oil’. Soya [L17th] is the Dutch form of the word: the Dutch had trade links with Japan before any other European nation, and continued to trade there from 1624 to 1868 when the British were shut out of the country, so the words probably entered English through Dutch.