Varvara

Varvara begins in Greek. The old word barbaros named anyone who did not speak Greek, whose talk sounded to Athenian ears like a repeated bar-bar. From there the name took its literal sense: foreign, stranger, someone from outside. Polish renders it as obca, cudzoziemka.

The label of an outsider softened over the centuries. Saint Barbara, a martyr honored across the Christian East, gave the name a settled home, and Orthodox tradition spoke it as Varvara. Russian and Ukrainian families kept this form, and it stayed common in both countries. Her feast falls on the fourth of December, marked in those lands as the day of Varvara.

The meaning never left. A girl called Varvara still carries a Greek word for the stranger, obca, cudzoziemka.