Huguenot, name that the Catholics gave as a nickname to Calvinist Protestants, but they did not apply to this word the true meaning that it originally had, and which neither Pasquier nor Ménage nor P. Daniel have been able to divine. Here it is:

The Bishop of Geneva, following the remark by M. de Voltaire, disputed the right of sovereignty over this town with the Duke of Savoy and with the people, on the example of so many prelates of Germany, was obliged to flee at the beginning of the 16th century, and to abandon the government to the citizens, who then recovered their liberty. For a long time there had been two parties in Geneva, that of the Protestants and that of the Roman Catholics. The Protestants called themselves Egnots , from the word eid-gnossen , allied by oath; the Egnots who triumphed attracted a part of the opposite faction and chased the rest away. And so the Protestants of France had the name Egnots and by corruption Huguenots , for which most French writers have since invented vain or odious origins. Such is the etymology of those who draw this word from the king Hugon , which was used to frighten the children of the Touraine, as is also the opinion of Castelnau Mauvissiere, who derives this term from a small coin that was supposed to be worth a chain-mail link in the time of the Hugues-Capet, by which one wanted to signify that the Protestants were not worth a maille and that they were a coin of bad alloy. These insinuations have caused torrents of blood to flow.