Jew (word) Jew (word) The English term Jew originates in the Biblical Hebrew word "Yehudi", meaning "from the Kingdom of Judah", or "Jew". It passed into Greek as "Ioudaios" and Latin as "Iudaeus", which evolved into the Old French "giu" after the letter "d" was dropped. A variety of related forms are found in early English from about the year 1000, including "Iudea", "Gyu", "Giu", "Iuu", "Iuw", and "Iew", which eventually developed into the modern word. According to the Book of Genesis, Judah (, "Yehudah") was the name of the fourth son of the patriarch Jacob. During the Exodus, the name was
Old French a two-case system, with a nominative case and an oblique case, for longer than some other Romance languages like Spanish and Italian did. Case distinctions, at least in the masculine gender, were marked on both the definite article and the noun itself. Thus, the masculine noun "li veisins" "the neighbour" (Latin "vicīnus" > Proto-Romance *"vecínos" > OF "veisins" ; Modern French "le voisin" ) was declined as follows: In later Old French, the distinctions had become moribund. As in most other Romance languages, it was the oblique case form that usually survived to become the Modern French form: "l'enfant" "the