THERE WERE LIEUTENANTS... AND LIEUTENANTS

In France, before the Thirty Years' War, there were lieutenants and lieutenants.

More specifically, there were countless ranks and offices with this word, originally meaning "placeholder", representative of authority.

There were, among many others, "lieutenant du roi" ("royal lieutenant", a title for a province governor) and the less important "lieutenant en armes" ("lieutenant of the guard"/"lieutenant of the company", the military rank).

The latter, as the French administration changed, was shortened to plain "lieutenant" and remains the only one surviving to this day, having been exported to countless other nation-states and languages.

PS. If you didn't know or remember, the French pronunciation is "lyöt-NAA".