girl

girl c.1300, gyrle "child" (of either sex), of unknown origin; current scholarship [OED says] leans toward an unrecorded O.E. *gyrele, from P.Gmc. *gurwilon-, dim. of *gurwjoz (apparently also represented by Low Ger. gære "boy, girl," Norw. dial. gorre, Swed. dial. gurre "small child," though the exact relationship, if any, between all these is obscure), from PIE *ghwrgh-, also found in Gk. parthenos "virgin." But this is highly conjectural. And Liberman (2008) writes:

Girl does not go back to any Old English or Old Germanic form. It is part of a large group of Germanic words whose root begins with a g or k and ends in r. The final consonant in girl is a diminutive suffix. The g-r words denote young animals, children, and all kinds of creatures considered immature, worthless, or past their prime.

Another candidate is O.E. gierela "garment" (for possible sense evolution in this theory, Cf. BRAT (Cf. brat)). Like boy, lass, lad it is of obscure origin. "Probably most of them arose as jocular transferred uses of words that had originally different meaning" [OED]. Specific meaning of "female child" is late 14c. Applied to "any young unmarried woman" since mid-15c. Meaning "sweetheart" is from 1640s. Girl next door as a type of unflashy attractiveness is recorded by 1953.

Doris [Day] was a big vocalist even before she hit the movies in 1948. There, as the latest movie colony "girl next door," sunny-faced Doris soon became a leading movie attraction as well as the world's top female recording star. "She's the girl next door, all right," said one Hollywood admirer. "Next door to the bank." ["Life" magazine, Dec. 22, 1958]

Girl Friday is from 1940, a reference to "Robinson Crusoe."