I guess I'd only ever heard of "Goth" used as a modern description of (mostly young) people who are into things that many others would consider macabre or morbid. I had heard much earlier the term "visigoth" applied much the same as as someone might call another person a philistine.


The people who are not like us are bad.
One of several derogatory terms named after groups of bad people:

General terms:
Barbarian (My Greek bud says this came from the Greek habit of describing how non-Greeks spoke - "Bar Bar Bar" or as we might say today "blah blah blah". That is nonGreek was gibberish.)

Savage - apparently a bastardization of sylvaticus (from the woods)

Heathen - Infidel (unconverted person) but usually intimating hedonism or depravity of some sort -- maybe these terms don't belong in either of these groups.


For specific groups:
Vandal - the germanic tribe or a generic destroyer

Goth - germanic tribe and as per awad.

Philistine - ignorant, materialistic, or uncultured person or resident of philistia

Hun - conqueror or (well) a specific conquering nomadic tribe.

Spartan - not necessarily a negative connotation, I guess.

Mongol - person from mongolia or a person with down's syndrome (i think this term was "meant" to be descriptive and not intentionally derogatory.)

Cossack - is this one? I vaguely recall the term being used to describe a lower class soldier. I'm not sure.

(Interestingly "viking" doesn't have the negative connotation - at least in my own mind.)


Odd observation: the terms parochial (narrow, often blindly or ignorantly so) and catholic (universal or eclectic) are almost antonyms.


k