'Render' is Latin for 'give back' — from 're-' (back) + 'dare' (to give). Every meaning traces to returning.
To provide or give a service, help, or information; to cause to become; to represent or depict artistically; to process or convert. As a noun, a first coat of plaster on a wall.
From Old French 'rendre' (to give back, to yield, to return), from Vulgar Latin '*rendere,' an alteration of Latin 'reddere' (to give back, to return, to restore), from 're-' (back) + 'dare' (to give), from PIE *deh₃- (to give). To render is literally to 'give back' — to return something owed, to deliver what is due. The extraordinary range of modern meanings all trace to different aspects of giving back: rendering a service (giving it), rendering a verdict (giving it back to the court), rendering fat (giving up its liquid). Key roots: re- (Latin: "back"), dare
The computing term 'render' (to generate an image from a model) preserves the artistic sense that developed in the eighteenth century — to render a scene is to 'give it back' as an image, translating a three-dimensional reality into a two-dimensional representation. When your graphics card renders a frame, it is performing the same conceptual operation as a painter rendering a landscape: giving back a version of something.