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From gudas(“Belarusian”) + -ija, from southeastern dialectal gudėti(“start speaking another dialect or language”). The prior meaning is believed to have been "foreigner, unable to speak Lithuanian"[1] (compare Proto-Slavic*němьcь(“foreigner, non-Slav, specifically of Germanic peoples”) from *němъ(“mute, unclear or incomprehensible speaker”)), and later narrowed to refer to East Slavic peoples specifically.
Further etymology unclear, but possibly from Gothic*𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌰(*guta, “Goth”), first adopted to refer to the Goths, then - to foreign peoples in general.[2]
^ Kamuntavičius, Rūstis (2021) “Dėl Gudijos pavadinimo”, in VLKK, National Commission on the Lithuanian Language, archived from the original on 1 January 2022
^ Gudavičius, Edvardas ((Can we date this quote?)) “Gudai”, in VLE, Visuotinė lietuvių enciklopedija
