In the UK we call them sweets, but in the US the same thing is called candy. Most UK speakers of English will recognise candy but are likely to feel it's an Americanism and even perhaps regard it as a relatively modern transatlantic coinage.
However something prompted me to look it up and it seems candy has a long history, has been borrowed from one language to another and across language multiple times, and has remained surprisingly stable for at least four thousand years. Although the OED is a bit reticent, Wiktionary and Etymology Online broadly agree its ancestry is probably as follows. The language groups are Indo-European IE, Semitic S and Dravidian D.
Modern English candy IE
↑
Middle English candy IE
↑
Old French candi IE
↑
Arabic qand S
↑
Persian qand IE
↑
Sanskrit khanda IE
↑
Proto-Dravidian *kantu D
There is some guesswork in the last step, since PD is a reconstructed language anyway, but Tamil, a modern Dravidian language common in India does have a word kantu, "candy", although of course this might be a back borrowing. But even so candy is a word with a long and distinguished pedigree.
Fun Fact: pedigree is from French pe-de-grue,"crane's foot", because in family trees a branching line of descent looks a bit like crane's foot.
Candy Story
In the UK we call them sweets, but in the US the same thing is called candy. Most UK speakers of English will recognise candy but are likely to feel it's an Americanism and even perhaps regard it as a relatively modern transatlantic coinage.
However something prompted me to look it up and it seems candy has a long history, has been borrowed from one language to another and across language multiple times, and has remained surprisingly stable for at least four thousand years. Although the OED is a bit reticent, Wiktionary and Etymology Online broadly agree its ancestry is probably as follows. The language groups are Indo-European IE, Semitic S and Dravidian D.
Modern English candy IE
↑
Middle English candy IE
↑
Old French candi IE
↑
Arabic qand S
↑
Persian qand IE
↑
Sanskrit khanda IE
↑
Proto-Dravidian *kantu D
There is some guesswork in the last step, since PD is a reconstructed language anyway, but Tamil, a modern Dravidian language common in India does have a word kantu, "candy", although of course this might be a back borrowing. But even so candy is a word with a long and distinguished pedigree.
Fun Fact: pedigree is from French pe-de-grue,"crane's foot", because in family trees a branching line of descent looks a bit like crane's foot.