The term caddy can refer to either a small storage container or a golfing assistant; these definitions are not related. The origin of the former comes from catty, which was a unit of weight used by the British East India Company. This term eventually became associated with the tea it measured, which originated from the Malay traders’ unit of measurement known as kati. On the other hand, the latter definition is an alternative spelling of caddie, which initially meant a “person who runs errands” in general. The Scottish spelling of the French term cadet, caddie evolved from a Gascon sense of a “young member of a noble family”. The word cadet can be traced back to the Latin noun capitellam, meaning “little chief”, which is derived from the root caput, signifying “head” as a chief is considered the head of a tribe. Ultimately, caput can be traced back to a Proto-Indo-European reconstruction with the same meaning of “head”, caput.
