chink n.1

"porcelain imported from China," 1650s, short for China-ware(1630s), China dishes (1570s), etc.; from the country name (see China). Used of porcelain and porcelain-ware generally. China-shop is attested from 1750.

"full of cracks or fissures," 1640s, from chink (n.1) + -y (2). As a noun by 1879, variant of chink (n.2), derogatory term for "Chinese person;" chiefly British.

c. 1300, sioun, "a shoot or twig," especially one for grafting, also figurative, from Old French sion, cion "descendant; shoot, twig; offspring" (12c., Modern French scion, Picard chion), a word of uncertain origin. OED rejects derivation from Old French scier "to saw" (as if originally "a sawing, a cutting") on formal grounds. Perhaps it is a diminutive of a Frankish word, from Proto-Germanic *kidon-, from PIE *geie- "to sprout, split, open" (see chink (n.1) ).

The meaning "an heir, child, a descendant" in English is from mid-14c., a figurative use. The proper spelling would be sion; the -c- in the French word, and hence in the English, is unetymological, as it is in scythe, apparently by influence of Latin scindere "to cut." Fem. form scioness seems to have been used mostly for humorous effect.