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 vowels, the fall of the unaccented syllable and of the final vowels: Additionally, two phonemes that had long since died out in Vulgar Latin were reintroduced: and (> OF "g(u)-", ONF "w-" cf. Picard "w-"): On the opposite, the Italian, Portuguese and Spanish words of Germanic origin borrowed from French or directly from Germanic retain ~ , e.g. It, Sp. "guerra" 'war', alongside in French "guerre"). In these examples, we notice a clear consequence of bilingualism, that sometimes even changed the first syllable of the Latin words. One example of a Latin word influencing an Old Low Franconian loan is