gazetteyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
gazette: [17] If the Sun or the Mirror were called the 22p, they would be echoing the origins of the word gazette. In Renaissance Venice, a ‘newspaper’ was termed casually gazeta de la novita (gazeta for short), literally a ‘pennyworth of news’ – for a gazeta was the name of a small Venetian copper coin (probably a diminutive form of gazza ‘magpie’).

Italian took the word over as gazzetta, and passed it on to English via French. The verbal use of gazette, ‘announce a military promotion officially’, arises from the practice of printing such announcements in the British government newspaper, the London Gazette (first published in the 17th century). The derived gazeteer [17], ultimately from Italian gazzettiere, originally meant ‘journalist’.

Its current sense ‘index of places’ was inspired by Laurence Echard’s The Gazetteer’s; or a Newsman’s Interpreter: Being a Geographical Index 1693.

index (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
late 14c., "the forefinger," from Latin index (genitive indicis) "forefinger, pointer, sign, list," literally "anything which points out," from indicare "point out" (see indication). Meaning "list of a book's contents" is first attested 1570s, from Latin phrases such as Index Nominum "Index of Names," index expurgatorius "specification of passages to be deleted from works otherwise permitted." Scientific sense (refractive index, etc.) is from 1829; economic sense (cost-of-living index, etc.) is from 1870, from the scientific usage, from sense "an indicator." The Church sense of "forbidden books" is from index librorum prohibitorum, first published 1564 by authority of Pius IV.