Warwara

Warwara begins in Greek. The word barbaros marked anyone who did not speak Greek, whose speech sounded to Greek ears like bar-bar, a stammer. From that came a name meaning foreign, the woman from elsewhere.

Warwara is the Russian form of Barbara, Варвара in Cyrillic. In the Orthodox calendar she appears as Saint Varvara, an early martyr whose feast falls on 4 December. Russian miners and gunners took her as their patron, so a name that once meant stranger became a household guardian.

On a Polish class register, Warwara stands out at once. It reads as Russian, and the meaning underneath it, obca, the stranger, has never quite left. The sense of foreignness sat in the Greek and stayed as the name traveled east.

The short meaning still holds. Warwara means the foreign one, the stranger.