Everyday LifeGreek → English
Barbara
/ˈbɑːbərə/noun
A female given name.
The Greek roots
βάρβαρος
bárbaros
foreign, non-Greek-speaking
Literally: “foreign woman”
Follow a root:βάρβαρος3 words
The story of the word
Βάρβαρος is imitative: to Greek ears foreign speech sounded like bar-bar, so the word meant nothing worse than someone who does not speak Greek. Saint Barbara, the third-century martyr locked in a tower by her father, carried the name into Christian Europe, where it was given to girls for centuries without anyone hearing an insult in it. The savagery sense is a Roman-era hardening of the term.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
barbarianbarbaricBerber
In a sentence
Barbara kept her maiden name on all the legal papers.