Spelling variants
Chorba or Shorba is variously derived from the Arabic word meaning gravy, or from a Persian term شوربا from shor (“salty, brackish”) and ba/ab, آب، ما (“water/stew”), or from a hypothetical cognate word common to Persian and Arabic.
Chorba is also called shorba (Persian: شوربا, Arabic: شوربة Amharic: ሾርባ), shorwa (Pashto: شوروا), ciorbă (Romanian), shurpa (Russian: шурпа), shorpa (Uyghur: شورپا, шорпа), çorba (Turkish, pronounced
[tʃoɾˈba]), shorpo (Kyrgyz: шорпо), and sorpa (Kazakh: сорпа). In the Indian subcontinent, the term shorba in Hindi (Hindi: शोरबा) simply means gravy, while in Urdu (Urdu: شوربہ) it may mean either gravy or soup.