The name "durian" is derived from the Malay word dūrī (meaning 'thorn'), a reference to the numerous prickly thorns on its rind, combined with the noun-building suffix -an.[6][7] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the alternate spelling durion was first used in a 1588 translation of The History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China and the Situation Thereof by the Spanish explorer Juan González de Mendoza:[6]