'Aboriginal' derives from Latin 'ab origine,' meaning 'from the beginning,' originally naming the pre-Roman peoples of Latium.
Inhabiting or existing in a land from the earliest times; indigenous. As a noun, an original inhabitant of a place.
From Latin 'aborigines,' the name Romans gave to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Latium. The Latin word is traditionally parsed as 'ab origine' ('from the beginning'), from 'ab' ('from') and 'origo' ('origin, source, beginning'), itself from 'oriri' ('to rise, to be born'). Some ancient authors, including Cato, treated 'Aborigines' as a proper tribal name rather than a descriptive term. The adjective 'aboriginal'
The Romans used 'Aborigines' to name the mythical first inhabitants of Latium who supposedly welcomed Aeneas when he fled Troy. Centuries later, the word was repurposed by European colonisers for the indigenous peoples they encountered worldwide, an irony not lost on modern scholars.