Henry Spencer wrote:
In article ,
Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
The ideogram meant "barbarian".

Well... if it was a single character, it just meant "foreigner."
"Barbarian" takes two.
Not that there's much of a distinction in Chinese.

Or most other places, if you go back not very far. "Barbarian" is
from a Greek word (via Latin) which meant either "foreign" or
"ignorant", and covered anyone who didn't speak Greek. (It's thought
to have originated as a mocking reference to foreign languages all
sounding like "bar-bar" to Greeks.)

"Goy" comes from the Hebrew word for "nation" (meaning all the *other*
nations of the world), and while it's not really an insult, it's very far
from being a compliment.