Note: The meaning of the Latin word is well illustrated by the following passage from Paul the Deacon's History of the Lombards (Historia Langobardorum, 1.20), written in the late eighth century: "Tato vero Rodulfi vexillum, quod bandum appellant, eiusque galeam, quam in bello gestare consueverat, abstulit." ("Tato [a Lombard king] indeed carried off the banner of Rodulf [a king of the Heruli, a Germanic people], which they call bandum, and his helmet, which he had been accustomed to wear in battle") The presumption is that the standard, which served as a rallying or assembly point for a group of soldiers, was applied to the group itself, and the meaning further generalized to any company of people. — The Gothic word bandwo is generally taken as descending from Indo-European *b^heh₂- "shine, give light, appear" (see fantasy entry 1) though derivational detail is lacking. D. Kroonen (Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Brill, 2013) sees it as from *b^honh₂-tu̯éh₂, from the base of Germanic *bannan- "speak formally, call on, order" (from *b^honh₂-e-, per Kroonen; see ban entry 1 ). The Gothic noun has a verbal derivative bandwjan "to give a sign, reveal," with a prefixed form gabandwjan. The verb is matched by Old Icelandic benda "to beckon, give a sign, forebode," apparently the only other Germanic evidence for the etymon.