'non-chiral' originates from English, specifically the prefix 'non-' (from Latin 'non', meaning 'not') combined with 'chiral', where the Greek root 'cheir' meant 'hand'.

'chiral' was coined in modern scientific English (notably used by Lord Kelvin in 1894) from Greek 'cheir' ('hand'); the compound 'non-chiral' was formed later in English by prefixing 'non-' to denote the absence of that property.

Initially the root 'cheir' referred literally to 'hand'; over time 'chiral' came to mean 'handed' in the technical sense of 'not superimposable on its mirror image', and 'non-chiral' consequently denotes the absence of that technical property.