I keep coming across statements saying that "barbarian" is derived onomatopoeically (thanks Google autocomplete and copy/paste) from the "babbling" Greeks heard when listening to outside languages. "Bar-bar-bar."
This sounds like bullshit folk etymology to me.
The Latin word for beard is barba. Is this where "barbarian" comes from? Or is the "bar-bar-bar" thing actually correct?
If it is, then is there any relation whatever between "barba" and "barbarian?"
There is, having a look at the major Latin dictionaries, no obvious etymological connection between barba and barbarus.
But the Latin barbarus is almost certainly just derived from the Greek βαρβαρός, which was in wide usage well before the Romans anyway, and exists in all sorts of compounds. And the Greek word for beard is not βαρβα or the like anyway.
The usage of the Greek word originates in anyone not speaking Greek, and that's why the folk etymology of bar-bar appears actually quite likely.
Furthermore, Tacitus continually popularizes the barbarian term in his works on the Germanic tribes. Especially in Germania At the time barbarian was usually used to describe any peoples other than Roman or Greeks/ what they thought as "civilized" societies.