The story
- Old English · inherited from-ende
- Middle English · inherited from-ant
- Latin · derived from-āns
- Old French · derived from-ant
- Middle English · inherited from-ant
- English today-ant
From Middle English -ant, -aunt, partly from Old French -ant, from Latin -āns; and partly (in adjectival derivations) continuing Middle English -ant, a variant of -and, -end, from Old English -ende (present participle ending), see -and. False cognate of Malay and Indonesian -an (and so all its Austronesian cognates), and Arabic ان (“adjective forming suffix”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.