Etymology
The term ploidy is a back-formation from haploid and diploid. These two terms are from Greek ἁπλόος haplóos "single" and διπλόος diplóos "double" combined with εἶδος eîdos "form" (compare idol from Latin īdōlum, that from Greek εἴδωλον eídōlon derived from εἶδος eîdos). The two haploid and diploid terms were borrowed from German through William Henry Lang's 1908 translation of a 1894 textbook by Eduard Strasburger and colleagues. Strasburger used diploid to refer to an organism with twice the number of chromosomes of a haploid organism, hence "double" and "single".
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