Kynam
Kynam is a spelling recorded in South Asian and Gulf agarwood trade. The general referent can be stated: it is used to name a category of material, and it appears in the same lists as the wood-type names. A near-spelling, Kinam, is recorded in the same usage. This entry does not assert that the two are the same word, and does not assert that they are different products.
Spelling, language and market
The name is written in Latin script in trade documents, as Kynam, and the Gulf usage carries the same letters in Arabic script. The near-spelling Kinam differs in one letter, at a position where South Asian transliteration is not consistent. Because a large part of this vocabulary travels in writing, the difference can be a naming distinction, a scribe's habit, or a different house's usage, and the records do not say which it is here.
Attested usage
The name appears in lists of material types and in short descriptions of material offered for sale, and sellers qualify it in the usual way. The usage is loose, and the sense a seller attaches to it has to be established from that seller rather than inferred from the letters. Where the word decides what the buyer is getting, the definition has to be obtained in writing before the order.
Named examples and neighbouring spellings
Kinam is the near-spelling recorded in the same usage, and the neighbouring names in the same lists include Mori, Salla and Hindi Muri. Whether the two are subdivisions of one name or separate names is not established here. Three ordinary documents would settle it: the supplier's own written definition, a batch record in which one material carries both forms, and a quotation in which the two are used of different lots with the difference explained.
Alternative meanings
Outside the trade the same letters appear in South Asian personal names, and in other languages the same letters spell words with no connection to wood. A description carrying the name on its own may therefore be read as a brand, a house name or a person. A short trade word of this kind may also denote a form, a treatment or a part rather than a category, and nothing in the letters rules that out.
What it does not prove
The name does not establish the species, the resin content, the oil yield, the age, the size or form of the material, or the country of origin. It establishes no grade, and it is not a protected designation. It establishes no relationship to Kinam in either direction.
This entry gives the general trade referent of the term and the near-spelling recorded with it. It does not establish the species, grading, composition, origin or quality of any material described with it, and it does not establish a synonymy between the two spellings.
- Biodiversity and application prospects of fungal endophytes in the agarwood-producing genera Aquilaria and Gyrinops (Thymelaeaceae): a reviewStates that all members of the agarwood-producing genera Aquilaria and Gyrinops are placed in CITES Appendix II. Records 92 compounds identified in agarwood, of which terpenoids are 40.22%, and names eighteen fungal genera reported to promote agarwood formation. It does not establish the quality, yield or age of any material, and it is a review rather than a regulatory instrument.
- Agarwood: A reviewStates that CITES Appendix II covers all species of Aquilaria and Gyrinops, and reports fifteen Aquilaria species distributed across the tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, from Pakistan and India through southern China into Southeast Asia. It does not establish the legal status of any individual shipment in any particular jurisdiction.
OudGuide editorial review · 2026-10-20
Reviewed against the cited sources for the general referent of the term, and checked for a question-specific answer. The precise attribution was checked against general trade usage rather than against a single market, and each entry states which parts are local rather than general.