We are taught to answer each question in the order it was asked, and therefore I will address the origin of “Gentile” first, although I can tell you now that the second question is a myth, as I will explain.
The word Gentile was introduced by non-Jews as a term of self-identity. Any theory that it denotes some kind of Jewish angst is incorrect. The English word Gentile has its origin from the Latin “gentelisis” and the French “gentil”, both derived from the root stem “gens”, a Latin word meaning “a selected clan or race of the same stock”.
Regarding the perhaps more controversial word “Goy” it is a myth that it refers in Judaism specifically to non-Jews, and by no means is it a derogatory word. We first find the word “Goy” in the Torah in the Book of Genesis 10:5, and it applies innocuously to non-Israelite nations. However, the same word “Goy” is mentioned a few chapters later in relation to the Israelites (Gen. 12:2) when God promises Abraham that his descendants will form a great nation. In Exodus 9:6 the Jewish people are referred to as a “Goy” when God calls them a holy nation.
Quite simply, the word “Goy” means “a nation”, and any use of it in a negative manner is incorrect, foolish and twisted.
One of the more poetic descriptions of the chosen people in the Torah, and popular among Jewish scholarship as the highest description of the Jewish nation is when God proclaims the Israelites to be a “goy echad ba’aretz” – “a unique nation upon the earth.” (2 Samuel 7:23 and 1 Chronicles 17:21)
