Kinda, greeks used it for anyone not speaking greek. Just good ol racism:
Persians, Romans, Phoenicians, Scythians, and Egyptians - Barbarians.
Romans took it to mean those out of greco-roman influence, hence the talk of barbarians.
Greeks also specifically named modern day Red Sea African countries (Sudan-Eritrea-Somalia) as Barbaria, their people as Barbars/Berbers.
From here it entered semitic languages like Arabic to mean people whose language is not understandable, and when Arabic expanded to north africa due to muslim conquests, they started naming Amazigh peoples of the saharan desert as berbers, since their language was different.
And berbers started receiving that name in Europe, settling their name forever after, because of feared berber piracy on the mediterranean.
So it’s indeed based on the greek word (most likely), but every group through time and geographic places has used to mean different peoples: non-greeks, non-grecoromans, non-semitics (for arameic languages and arabic speakers the people of Somalia spoke weird language compared to arameic languages in eritrea-ethiopia-sudan at the time), etc.
Greeks also specifically named modern day Red Sea African countries (Sudan-Eritrea-Somalia) as Barbaria, their people as Barbars/Berbers.
Here’s the thing, though: Sudan-Eritrea-Somalia are neither North African countries (they’re more Central-East African) nor too close to Greece, so how did they even name that place Barbaria? They had to be aware that such a place exist. Did they send a few Greek people to explore Africa to look at their way of life and they ended up calling it Barbaria simply because they didn’t like the way they lived?
They called it Barbaria because they didnt understand, might have thought the language to be too unique for the region, it happened too long ago to be sure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbaria_(region)
In general, a lot of people dont understand that even Chinese Han Empire and Roman Empire actually had contacts, they just never explored them any further “because my culture is clearly superior anyways”. They were aware the world was bigger than they controlled, but Persia was always inbetween
It’s actually a Greek word to refer to non-Greeks
Were North Africans the most people that visited Greece at the time? Because “Barbarians” sounds oddly close to “Berber”, whom are from North Africa.
Kinda, greeks used it for anyone not speaking greek. Just good ol racism: Persians, Romans, Phoenicians, Scythians, and Egyptians - Barbarians.
Romans took it to mean those out of greco-roman influence, hence the talk of barbarians.
Greeks also specifically named modern day Red Sea African countries (Sudan-Eritrea-Somalia) as Barbaria, their people as Barbars/Berbers.
From here it entered semitic languages like Arabic to mean people whose language is not understandable, and when Arabic expanded to north africa due to muslim conquests, they started naming Amazigh peoples of the saharan desert as berbers, since their language was different.
And berbers started receiving that name in Europe, settling their name forever after, because of feared berber piracy on the mediterranean.
So it’s indeed based on the greek word (most likely), but every group through time and geographic places has used to mean different peoples: non-greeks, non-grecoromans, non-semitics (for arameic languages and arabic speakers the people of Somalia spoke weird language compared to arameic languages in eritrea-ethiopia-sudan at the time), etc.
Here’s the thing, though: Sudan-Eritrea-Somalia are neither North African countries (they’re more Central-East African) nor too close to Greece, so how did they even name that place Barbaria? They had to be aware that such a place exist. Did they send a few Greek people to explore Africa to look at their way of life and they ended up calling it Barbaria simply because they didn’t like the way they lived?
They (grecoromans) did travel the Red Sea, because Egypt traded through there with Asia, so they were interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periplus_of_the_Erythraean_Sea
They called it Barbaria because they didnt understand, might have thought the language to be too unique for the region, it happened too long ago to be sure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbaria_(region)
In general, a lot of people dont understand that even Chinese Han Empire and Roman Empire actually had contacts, they just never explored them any further “because my culture is clearly superior anyways”. They were aware the world was bigger than they controlled, but Persia was always inbetween