Borax

The English word borax is Latinized: the Middle English form was boras, from Old French boras, bourras. That may have been from medieval Latin baurach (another English spelling), borac(-/um/em), borax, along with Spanish borrax (> borraj) and Italian borrace, in the 9th century. Another name for borax is tincal, from Sanskrit.[12]

The word tincal /ˈtɪŋkəl/ “tinkle”, or tincar /ˈtɪŋkər/ “tinker”, refers to crude borax, before it is purified, as mined from lake deposits in Tibet, Persia, and other parts of Asia. The word was adopted in the 17th century from Malay tingkal and from Urdu/Persian/Arabic تنکار‎ tinkār/tankār; thus the two forms in English. These all appear to be related to the Sanskrit टांकण ṭānkaṇa.[19][20]

Borax occurs naturally in evaporite deposits produced by the repeated evaporation of seasonal lakes. Fibrous nodules of ulexite and proberite (sodium and calcium borate minerals) known as “cottonball” were found in salt deposits on the valley floor of California’s Death Valley in the 1880s and taken to market on 20-mule team wagons. By the 1890s railroads were transporting purer forms of mined borax such as colemanite, kernite, priceite, and ulexite.[21]

The most commercially important deposits are found in: Turkey; Boron, California; and Searles Lake, California. Borax has been found at many other locations in the Southwestern United States, the Atacama desert in Chile, and in Bolivia, Tibet, and Romania.

Naturally occurring borax is refined by a process of recrystallization.[22]

Borax can be produced synthetically from other boron compounds.