Borrowed from Middle Dutch glas or Middle Low German glas (“glass (material; container)”). The Germanic term probably meant originally “amber” (a meaning still attested in Old High German), and only later “glass.” The borrowing is first mentioned in 17th-century Latvian dictionaries (though the family name Glāznieks is already attested in Kurzeme in the 16th century). Up until the 19th century, glāze meant both the material and the container; by the late 19th century on, these two meanings had already been split between glāze and stikls.