the.com/heathen

means A person regarded by a dominant religion as an outsider who worships the wrong gods or none at all — a label applied from the outside, never chosen by the person it names.

from Traces back to Old English hæðen, meaning someone who lives on the heath — the open, uncultivated moorland outside town. The logic was geographic snobbery turned theological: country folk out on the wild heath were slower to convert to the new faith, so 'heath-dweller' curdled into 'pagan, unbeliever.' It's possibly related to Gothic haiþno, with a similar sense, and often compared to how 'pagan' itself comes from Latin paganus, a rural villager — two words, one pattern: the city brands the countryside as godless.