The stress falls on the second syllable.
This is another name for one of the two different chinaberry trees. It comes via French from Persian azad-dirakht, meaning “free tree.” How Persia and China got to compete in naming this tree I do not know—it’s an Asian tree, I guess maybe its range is from China to Iran. What I find most amusing is the origin of the words. Dirakht is tree, that’s simple enough (though it’s related to truth, truce, trust, and tryst as well as more obvious words like dryad and druid). But azad comes from Persian zadan, “to be born,” originally from a way old root meaning “to give birth,” which shows up in English words like gene, germ, gender, genesis, and pregnant (pre-birth). So analyzed out to its beginnings, azederach means (are you ready for this?) family tree.
updated 30 June 2000