Huguenots; origin of the term

[GHansen]

The Friburg deputies had hardly left the city, when the duke’s party accosting the independent Genevans, and gallicising each in his own way the German word Eidesgenosen (confederates) which they could not pronounce, called after them Eidguenots, Eignots, Eyguenots, Huguenots! This word is met with in the chronicles of the time written in different ways; fta118 Michel Roset, the most respectable of these authorities of the sixteenth century, writes Huguenots; we adopt that form, because it is the only one that has passed into our language. It is possible that the name of the citizen, Besancon Hugues, who became the principal leader of this party, may have contributed to the preference of this form over all the others. In any case it must be remembered that until after the Reformation this sobriquet had a purely political meaning, in no respect religious, and designated simply the friends of independence. Many years after, the enemies of the Protestants of France called them by this name,  wishing to stigmatize them, and impute to them a foreign, republican, and heretical origin.    

Such is the true etymology of the word; it would be very strange if these two denominations, which are really but one, had played so great a part in the sixteenth century, at Geneva and in French Protestantism, without having had any connection with one another.

History of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin book 1, ch. 9, p 104

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