'Nomadic' shares its root with 'economy' — both from Greek 'nemein' (to distribute). Herd management is economics.
Living the life of a nomad; wandering from place to place without a fixed home, typically in search of food, pasture, or seasonal resources.
From Greek 'nomadikós' (of or pertaining to nomads), from 'nomás' (roaming, wandering, especially for pasture), genitive 'nomádos.' The Greek word derives from 'némein' (to pasture, to graze, to distribute), from PIE *nem- (to assign, to allot, to take). The same Greek root gave English 'economy' (oikonomía, household management) and 'astronomy' (law of the stars), revealing an ancient conceptual link between wandering, pasturing, and distributing. Key roots: nomás (νομάς) (Greek: "roaming, especially for pasture"), némein (νέμειν) (Greek: "to pasture, to distribute"), *nem- (Proto-Indo-European: "to
The ancient Romans called the inhabitants of what is now Algeria and Tunisia 'Numidae' (Numidians), which many scholars believe derives from the same Greek root 'nomás' — the Romans named an entire nation after the concept of wandering. Numidia literally meant 'land of the nomads.'