It's amazing to see what's happened to English "nice" itself over the history of the word https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nice https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nic

It's amazing to see what's happened to English "nice" itself over the history of the word https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nice https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nice I think technically in the case you describe the two words are true cognates, but with different meanings. Cognate means that they share an etymology, not necessarily that they share an etymology and a present-day meaning. Wikipedia distinguishes false friends from false cognates this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend