The Indian hookah or hucca, hukkah, hooka, hookka...
Indian hookahs or shisha pipes are also known as hukka, hucca, huccah, hukkah, hooka or hookkah - and quite likely there are ways of spelling that I'm still blissfully unaware of. Although the majority of Western hookah smokers have encountered their pipes in or via
Egypt where the things are called "shisha", the Indian name "hookah" has stuck in English speaking countries. This is due to the colonial history of India: the British officials were introduced to the waterpipe there, whereupon they brought home and continued the local name. This takes a bit of getting used to: the generic name has become "shisha" all over the world, with the exception of the UK and the US where the pipe is called "hookah" and the word "shisha" has become attached to the tobacco. As if the confusion with all those different names wasn't big enough already (grin)!
