gun

\ \ [14] Gun probably comes, unlikely as it may seem, from the Scandinavian female forename Gunnhildr (originally a compound of gunnr ‘war’ and hildr ‘war’). It is by no means unusual for large fearsome weapons to be named after women (for reasons perhaps best left to psychologists): the huge German artillery weapon of World War I, Big Bertha, and the old British army musket, Brown Bess, are cases in point. And it seems that in the Middle Ages Gunnhildr or Gunhild was applied to various large rock-hurling seige weapons, such as the ballista, and later to cannon. The earliest recorded sense of gun (on this theory representing Gunne, a pet form of Gunhild) is ‘cannon’, but it was applied to hand-held firearms as they developed in the 15th century.