nil is Latin. null is English/French. They both mean the same thing - "nothing". As long as people speak more than one language across the globe, there will be multiple words for the same things.
1. I can't think of any other keyword in golang that comes from Latin. It's a dead language.
2. The meaning of null is well-understood by the CS community. The meaning of nil is not; it seems to be redefined by each language that includes it. For example, nil is the empty list in Scala.
> I can't think of any other keyword in golang that comes from Latin.
Yet you probably know more Latin from programming than you think you do. Did you know that integer is Latin?
> It's a dead language.
"In fields as varied as mathematics, physics, astronomy, medicine, pharmacy, biology, and philosophy Latin still provides internationally accepted names of concepts, forces, objects, and organisms in the natural world."
"interface", "import", "struct", "constant", "defer", "func", "select" are all directly Latin words, truncations of Latin words, or obvious portmanteaus of Latin words. "default" is ultimately from Latin but a bit less immediately so.
...Get over it?