From Latin 'natio' (birth, breed), from PIE *genh1- — originally 'a people connected by birth,' not a sovereign state.
A large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular territory and organized under one government.
From Old French 'nacion' (birth, rank, descent), from Latin 'nātiō' (birth, origin, breed, race, nation), from 'nātus,' past participle of 'nāscī' (to be born), from PIE *ǵenh₁- (to give birth, beget). The Latin word originally meant 'birth' or 'breed' and carried the sense of people connected by birth — a race or stock. In medieval universities, 'natio' designated groups of students from the same region. The modern political sense of a sovereign nation-state is largely an eighteenth-century development, accelerated by the French