The term Jew is derived from Hebrew יְהוּדִי Yehudi, originally the term for the people of the Israelitekingdom of Judah. According to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe of Judah and the kingdom of Judah derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob.[48] Genesis 29:35 and 49:8 connect the name “Judah” with the verb yada, meaning “praise”, but scholars generally agree that the name of both the patriarch and the kingdom instead have a geographic origin—possibly referring to the gorges and ravines of the region.[49][50] The shift of ethnonym from “Israelites” to “Jews” (inhabitant of Judah), although not contained in the Torah, is made explicit in the Book of Esther (4th century BCE),[51] a book in the Ketuvim, the third section of the Jewish Tanakh.
The Hebrew word for “Jew” is יְהוּדִי Yehudi, with the plural יְהוּדִים Yehudim.[52] Endonyms in other Jewish languages include the Ladino ג׳ודיו Djudio (plural ג׳ודיוס, Djudios) and the Yiddish ייִד Yid (plural ייִדן Yidn).
The English word “Jew” continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe. These terms were loaned via the Old Frenchgiu, which itself evolved from the earlier juieu, which in turn derived from judieu/iudieu which through elisionhad dropped the letter “d” from the Medieval Latin Iudaeus, which, like the New Testament Greek term Ioudaios, meant both “Jew” and “Judean” / “of Judea“.[53] The Greek term was a loan from Aramaic*yahūdāy, corresponding to Hebrew יְהוּדִי Yehudi.[48]
The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., يَهُودِيّ yahūdī (sg.), al-yahūd (pl.), in Arabic, “Jude” in German, “judeu” in Portuguese, “Juif” (m.)/”Juive” (f.) in French, “jøde” in Danish and Norwegian, “judío/a” in Spanish, “jood” in Dutch, “żyd” in Polish etc., but derivations of the word “Hebrew” are also in use to describe a Jew, e.g., in Italian (Ebreo), in Persian (“Ebri/Ebrani” (Persian: عبری/عبرانی)) and Russian(Еврей, Yevrey).[54] The German word “Jude” is pronounced [ˈjuːdə], the corresponding adjective “jüdisch” [ˈjyːdɪʃ] (Jewish) is the origin of the word “Yiddish”.[55]
According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition (2000),
It is widely recognized that the attributive use of the noun Jew, in phrases such as Jew lawyer or Jew ethics, is both vulgar and highly offensive. In such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a practice that carries risks of its own. In a sentence such as There are now several Jews on the council, which is unobjectionable, the substitution of a circumlocution like Jewish people or persons of Jewish background may in itself cause offense for seeming to imply that Jew has a negative connotation when used as a noun.[56]