The English word "sirocco" comes to English from Italian
sirocco / scirocco. It refers specifically to a hot wind in the Mediterranean that blows from north African into southern Europe. For more information about the sirocco wind, see this fascinating Wikipedia article:
Sirocco.
The Italian word in turn comes from Arabic
sharqi, meaning "eastern, the east wind," from
sharq, meaning "the east." The root is
sharaqa, "to rise." Because the sun rises in the east, Arabic
sharq means "east," just as the Latin word
oriens, "rising," gives us the English words Orient and Oriental.
The image below shows a
NASA satellite image of a sirocco wind out of Libya blowing dust over the Mediterranean and southern Europe.
The other easterly winds of the Mediterranean are the Levant wind and the Gregale. here is a handy graphic that shows the specialized names of these
Mediterranean winds:
