The origins of the word martingale and why it is used to refer to various betting strategies is interesting and obscure: https://ergodicity.net/2012/04/11/the-h

The origins of the word martingale and why it is used to refer to various betting strategies is interesting and obscure: https://ergodicity.net/2012/04/11/the-history-of-the-martingale/ https://ergodicity.net/2012/04/11/the-history-of-the-marting.... Probably the etymology that makes most sense is that it refers to people from Martigues who were considered to be naive. So people knew that the simple strategy of “betting all that was lost” was horrible even in Middle Ages.