Shinobi And Ninja
“The two most famous ninja clans were Iga (from Mie prefecture) and Koga (Shiga prefecture).”
I was going to add “Lawyer” but couldn’t make it fit.:rolleyes:
Philistine (uncultured person, from the people)
cannibal (from the Taino name for the Carib, who apparently were just that)
Zealot, from an ancient Jewish sect
Samaritan .
‘Yanki’ in Japanese, in the sense of ‘delinquent youth’.
Gringo, which probably is derived from griego, Spanish for Greek, referring to speakers of an unintelligible language (although the origin is disputed)
Tartar, for a violent or ferocious person
Sodomite
Baluba
And it’s not a noun, but it’s been adopted into many languages from Italian:
“Ciao”, from Latin “sclavus” (meaning slave), from “Slav”.
I hope adjectives that can describe people count. The common adjective frank (originally meaning “free”, now more often “honest”) and related words like franchise, franking (free use of the postal service), etc., and the personal names Frank, Francis, and Frances, are all derived from the the name of the Franks, an ancient Germanic tribe. They are also the namesake of France.
Lumberer is a rare word (at least on this side of the pond) for a pawnbroker. It is probably ultimately from the name of the Lombards, another Germanic tribe. Some sources claim lumbering (“moving awkwardly”) is from the same source but this is doubtful.
Mohawk or Mohock was a word for “ruffian” in London current in the early 1700s.
Pharisee (“a stickler for rules”) is from the Jewish sect.
Dunce (“stupid person”) doesn’t quite fit the bill. It originally referred to theologian John Duns Scotus and his followers, but he didn’t found anything you could call a sect, but more a school of thought. If philosophical schools counted we’d have to include cynic and skeptic.
Have we listed “cretin” yet?
Charlatan, possibly.
The word “mong” (a mild put-down meaning silly fool) that got Ricky Gervais in trouble derives from the once-mainstream use of “Mongoloid” to describe Down’s Syndrome.
Not to mention “Laconic”
Hun went from Hungarians to Germans to the English.
A lot of racist terms for Italians seem to come from other ethnic groups, but the etymology is questionable. Guinea, dago, wog.
And epicure (originally from the philosopher Epicurus).
Farang - widely used in south and southeast Asian languages to mean whites or Europeans - ultimately derives from the Franks.
Crusader - used as a pejorative analogous to ‘infidel’ - has gained currency in recent years, especially among Muslims.
Bugger - from Bulgar, or both derived from the same source.
Both Ninja and Shinobi are descriptors of the occupation, if you look at the Chinese characters. While it is true that two towns were the source of many of the people who served in that occupation, it was not limited to them, did not describe everyone from those towns, nor did it come from the name of the people of that area.
It it right to say that this was the identifier for an ethnic/religious group analogous to the other examples? Seems more like it describes an activity.
Lest this be thought a reference to people from Crete, the origin is from “Christian” (as a reminder that the mentally defective were still human beings.)
In German, “welsch” usually meant a generic sort of foreigner, or more commonly southern Europeans, at least in classical literature. It’s easy to see how from Anglo-Saxon it would come to mean the Celts who ended up in Wales, but whether the English usage to mean someone untrustworthy or dishonest originally attached to them, or to foreigners in general, I don’t know.