Sugar has origins in ancient India where it was known as 'sharkara' in Sanskrit[1].
For reasons I haven't been able to figure out, some modern Indian languages (like Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi) call it 'cheeni' which is the same word to refer to someone as Chinese. Other languages use variations of the Sanskrit 'sakhar', 'sakkare'
In Hindi we only call the crystallized version chini possibly due to Chinese figuring out the crystallization process. The crude version is called Shakar in Hindi.
For reasons I haven't been able to figure out, some modern Indian languages (like Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi) call it 'cheeni' which is the same word to refer to someone as Chinese. Other languages use variations of the Sanskrit 'sakhar', 'sakkare'
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sugar