BARBARIANS

The root of the word is clearly BARBAR (coincides with the name of a village in Bahrain).

The B-V ambiguity (thanks to the Greek β) throughout the history left us with a 50-50 split between BARBAR and VARVAR (the latter being, for example, the Slav equivalent of BARBAR).

Both can be interpreted as having the Svan toponymic AR-suffix : places of BARB and VARV correspondingly. Although, for the purity of the approach, we shouldn't disregard BARV and VARB either.

The root BARB first of all relates to wheel - ბარბალი [barbali] - and to spinning. Hence, BARBAR could be interpreted as 'place of wheels' or 'place of spinning'.

The root BARV exists in the name of Satskhe-Javakheti's village's name of Barvi, whatever it used to mean. So BARVAR would mean thus 'place of barvi'.

But we remember that -V- can be the omittable suffix, which leaves us with the root BAR. It has two major meanings in Kartvelian: valley and spade. So, BARVAR can be interpreted also as 'place of valleys' or 'place of spades'.

VARBI doesn't seems to exist.

But VARVI does perfectly well as a combination of the root VARI + V (the omittable suffix). VARI has the closest meaning to what could characterize best the Barbarians, meaning 'swindle'. Thus, VARVAR quite confidently means 'land of swindle' if looked at from the Svan-Kartvelian point of view.