It is a variant form of the name Yentl (Yiddish: יענטל), which ultimately is thought to be derived from the Italian word gentile, meaning 'noble' or 'refined'.
[1][2] The name has entered American English only in the form yenta in the senses of "meddler, busybody, blabbermouth, gossip" and is not only used to refer to women.
[3][4][5] Both the forms yenta and yente are used in Yinglish (Jewish varieties of English) to refer to someone who is a gossip or a busybody.
[6][7] The popularity continued in the 1920s and 1930s as the humorist Jacob Adler, writing under the pen name B. Kovner for The Jewish Daily Forward, wrote a series of comic sketches featuring the characters, with Yente as a 'henpecking wife'.
The origin of this error is the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof, in which a character named Yente serves as the matchmaker for the village of Anatevka.