A judging of worth or performance against a standard. Evaluation must name its standard or it is only an opinion.
French évaluer, from value, from Latin valere (to be worth, to be strong).
Its root ties worth to strength before it ever ties worth to price: valere meant to be strong, to have force, and value grew out of that capacity rather than out of a market. An evaluation, at root, asks how much force a thing actually has; a standard is just where that force gets measured against.