Few is cognate with the Latin word paucus, from which we get the words paucity, pauper, poor, and poverty. (This makes few cognate with Romance words like Spanish poco and French peu.) These all descend from a Proto-Indo-European root *pau, meaning 'smallness'. Other derivatives were sometimes used to refer to the young of animals, including pullet (via Latin) for young chickens and foal (from Old English) for young horses. From Latin we also get the name Paul, which meant 'small'.
