zamsz.

Borrowed from Czech zámiš, from Middle High German samisch, later sämisch, from Middle French chamois, identical to the animal name chamois; in this understanding also Spanish gamuza and Portuguese camurça use the same word for the caprine and for the hide. Discarded derivations : Note that a lot of false etymologies circulate about this fabric's name: * derived from Turkic, Turkish semiz (“fat”), due to the use of fish oil in tanning, allegedly via Arabic dialects, also linking via شَحْم (šaḥm) and سَمْن (samn, “fat”) which are completely unrelated to the Turkic word; * in German sources, it is often alleged on the basis of the spellings to have come from Middle Dutch; a corrupt version of this story derives the word from Dutch seem (“*soft, *weich”) which is not known in Dutch; * the similarity in Kazakh referring to shammy, apart from күдері (küderi) by жұмсақ тері (jumsaq teri, literally “soft leather”), is a coincidence; * a rarer, baseless claim derives the word from Sambia in Eastern Prussia; * some have considered a Slavic origin, though the Slavic words postdate the German attestations and even more so the Romance ones, and Slavic internal derivations, if attempted, are vagary, such as connecting the word with замше́ть (zamšétʹ, “to become mossy”).