Native means belonging to a place by birth. A native speaker, my native language, native to the region.
Native speaker is the commonest use in language teaching and is a contested measure of ability. Of plants and animals, native means naturally occurring there rather than introduced: native woodland, a native species. Note that native as a noun for a person is best avoided outside the phrase a native of, because of its colonial use; and that Native American and First Nations are the preferred terms in North America, capitalised.
1adjectivenativeBelonging to a place by birth.
“Her native language is Portuguese and she thinks in English.”
2adjectivenaturallyNaturally occurring in a place rather than introduced.
“Only about a third of the trees there are native.”
native is a quality of origin.
Latin nativus means born, from nasci, to be born — the same root as nature, nation and innate. To be native to a place is to have been born there, and everything else in the word grows from that.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵenh₁-
Latin
nātīvus
Old French
natif
Middle English
natif
English, today
native
Built from
Middle English natif, from Old French natif, from Latin nātīvus, from nātus (“birth”). a doublet of naive and neif. Displaced native Middle English thedisch, equivalent to (puristic) theed + -ish. by surface analysis, nat- + -ive. Compare also inborn.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA