This legendary and mysterious tribe of fish-eaters is located by herodotus somewhere around Caspian Sea. The Kartvelian ET-suffix demands it to be interpreted not as the name of nation but rather as the name of country. Thus we can translate MASSAGETAE as 'land of massag(i)'. What can we do about 'massag(i)'? There is no such Georgian word.
But instead there is an excellent Ossetian (Alan, Scythian) suffix '-ag' with the help of which the names of peoples are constructed (somihag, pecheneg/patsinak, etc.). So, wit this suffix taken away, we end up having 'mass' as the root. And this root is present is Georgian language perfectly well: 'mase' (แแแกแ) means 'fishing net' (arch.). The double 'ss' may be a preventive measure against sonorization (turning into [z]) between vowels, as it's well known in most European languages.
Thus, 'massag' is 'fisherman', while Massagetae - 'land of fishermen', exactly as it's described by Herodotus.
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