The name is from Proto-Germanic *Langgobardoz, often said to mean literally "Long-beards" (see long (adj.) + beard (n.)), but according to OED the second element is perhaps rather from the proper name of the people (Latin Bardi). Their name in Old English was Langbeardas (plural), but also Heaðobeardan, from heaðo "war."
In Middle English the word meant "banker, money-changer, pawnbroker" (late 14c.), especially a Lombard or other Italian trading locally, before it was used in reference to the nationality. The name in Old French (Lombart, Lombert) also meant, in addition, "money-changer; usurer; coward." Lombards were noted throughout medieval Western Europe as bankers and money-lenders, also pawn-brokers. French also gave the word in this sense to Middle Dutch and Low German.
London's Lombard Street (c. 1200) originally was the site of the houses of Lombard (and other Italian) bankers, who dominated the London money-market into Elizabethan times. An old expression for "long odds, much against little" was Lombard Street to a China orange (1815, earlier to an egg-shell, 1763).
"iced gin drink served in a tall glass" (called a Collins glass), 1940, American English; earlier Tom Collins (by 1878), of uncertain origin. Popular in early 1940s; bartending purists at the time denied it could be based on anything but gin. The surname (12c.) is from a masc. proper name, a diminutive of Col, itself a pet form of Nicholas (compare Colin).
capital of old Brabant and modern Belgium, a name of Germanic origin, from brocca "marsh" + sali "room, building," from Latin cella (see cell). It arose 6c. as a fortress on an island in a river. As a type of carpet, from 1799; as a type of lace, from 1748.
Brussels sprouts (Brassica oleracea gemmifera) is attested from 1748 (the first written description of them is from 1580s); they have long been associated with Flanders and especially Brussels (compare the French name, choux de Bruxelles).
Old English Scottas (plural) "inhabitants of Ireland, Irishmen," from Late Latin Scotti (c. 400), a name of uncertain origin, perhaps from Celtic (but answering to no known tribal name; Irish Scots appears to be a Latin borrowing). The name followed the Irish tribe which invaded Scotland 6c. C.E. after the Romans withdrew from Britain, and after the time of Alfred the Great the Old English word described only the Irish who had settled in the northwest of Britain.
"pertaining to Greece," 1640s, from Greek Hellēnikos "Hellenic, Greek," from Hellēn "a Greek," a word of unknown origin; traditionally from the name of an eponymous ancestor, Hellēn, son of Deucalion. To Homer the Hellenes were a small tribe in southern Thessaly (his word for one of the Greek-speaking peoples is our Achaean). In modern use in the arts, Hellenic is used of Greek work from the close of the primitive phase to the time of Alexander the Great or the Roman conquest (succeeded by the Hellenistic).
