In March 1516, the Venetian Senate ordered the city's Jews to move to an island in Cannaregio that had previously housed a copper foundry. In the local dialect, the foundry was called a geto, derived from the verb to cast. When the segregated quarter took that name, it became the first time a specific place name transitioned into a general term for segregation itself.
It is a reminder of how casual linguistic accidents can attach themselves to profound historical horrors, outliving their original contexts by centuries. Words that start as local administrative compromises eventually travel across languages and continents, accumulating meanings their originators could never have anticipated. Tracing these etymologies does not simplify history, but it clarifies how our current vocabulary was built from old debris.
more: https://aeon.co/essays/the-making-of-the-ghetto-on-a-venetian-island-in-1516
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