Georgia (country) - Etymology

Etymology

Ethnic Georgians call themselves Kartvelebi (ქართველები), their land Sakartvelo (საქართველო – meaning "a land of Kartvelians"), and their language Kartuli (ქართული). According to the ancient Georgian Chronicles, the ancestor of the Kartvelians was Kartlos, the great grandson of the Biblical Japheth. The name Sakartvelo (საქართველო) consists of two parts. Its root, kartvel-i (ქართველ-ი), specifies an inhabitant of the core central-eastern Georgian region of Kartli, or Iberia as it is known in sources of Eastern Roman Empire. Ancient Greeks (Strabo, Herodotus, Plutarch, Homer, etc.) and Romans (Titus Livius, Tacitus, etc.) referred to early eastern Georgians as Iberians (Iberoi in some Greek sources) and western Georgians as Colchians.

The terms "Georgia" and "Georgian" appeared in Western Europe in numerous early medieval annals. At the time, the name was folk etymologized – for instance, by the French chronicler Jacques de Vitry and the compiler John Mandeville – from Georgians' especial reverence of Saint George. Another theory, popularized by the likes of Jean Chardin, semantically linked "Georgia" to Greek and Latin roots, respectively, γεωργός ("tiller of the land") and georgicus ("agricultural"). The supporters of this explanation sometimes referred to classical authors, in particular Pliny and Pomponius Mela, who wrote of "Georgi" tribes, which were named so to distinguish them from their unsettled and pastoral neighbors. According to some scholars, "Georgia" could have been borrowed in the 11th or 12th century from the Syriac gurz-ān or -iyān and Arabic ĵurĵan or ĵurzan, derived from the New Persian gurğ or gurğān.