 In the Dutch-speaking North of France, Bible students who gathered in each other's houses to study secretly were called "Huis Genooten" ("housemates") while on the Swiss and German borders they were termed "Eid Genossen", or "oath fellows", that is, persons bound to each other by an oath.Gallicised into "Huguenot", often used deprecatingly, the word became, during two and a half centuries of terror and triumph, a badge of enduring honour and courage.Some disagree with such double or triple non-French linguistic origins.