Etymology

Visigoth

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Today it means: Any member of an ancient East Germanic tribe, one branch of the Goths (the Ostrogoths being the other), which participated in several wars with Rome and established a kingdom with Toulouse for its capital. Full definition →

Late Latin Visigothus ← Proto-Germanic *wesuz ← Proto-Indo-European *h₁wésus
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The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European · derived from*h₁wésus“good, excellent”
  2. Proto-Germanic · derived from*wesuz
  3. Late Latin · borrowed fromVisigothus
  4. English todayVisigoth

Borrowed from Late Latin Visigothus, from Gothic. According to Mallory & Adams, possibly a tribal name derived from Proto-Germanic *wesuz (reflected in personal names such as Old High German *wisu), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁wésus (“good, excellent”). If so, related to Proto-Celtic *wesus (found in personal names), the Italic goddess Vesuna, and Sanskrit वसु (vasu, “good, excellent”). The term was coined by Cassiodorus under the misapprehension that it meant "west Goths".

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.