A female name. (French Barbe, Russian Varvara); f. of Greek βάρβαρος ‘strange’, 'foreign’. St Barbara, a 3rd-C Syrian saint, was one of the four great virgin saints, and though her name never became as common as those of the others (Margaret, Agnes, Katharine), yet it was fairly popular in the Middle Ages and from the end of the 12th C onwards. She was the patroness of architects and engineers, and invoked against thunder and lightning. The English form of the name was Barbary, and Charlotte Mary Yonge, History of ChristianNames, 2 vols. 1863. Revised ed. 1884 says it was still so pronounced by poor people in her time. The French form Barbe and its diminutive Barbot also occur in medieval records, and both gave rise to surnames. It was still fairly common in the 16th C, but, like other names of non-scriptural saints, it tended to drop out of use after the Reformation. C. W. Bardsley, Dictionary of English and WelshSurnames (pub. 1901), writing c. 1870, says it is‘now of rarest use’. It was revived with other medieval names at the beginning of the 20th C. The usual modern abbreviation is Babs, which has been used at least since the 17th C.

Barbot Curia Regis Rolls 1203-5. Barbata, Barbota Calendarium Genealogicum 13th C. Barbery Church Registers of St. Antholin, Budge Row, 1538-1754 1581. Barberry Cheshunt Church Registers 1692.

(See also Bab, Babie, Bar, and Barbary.) One of the four great virgin saints of the Roman Catholic Church (see also Agnes), she came, ‘in the floating allegories of the Church’, to be the representative of artistic devotion. She is supposed to have been beheaded by her father (in propria persona, as they say) for a somewhat florid manifestation of her Christianity. The word is the f. of βαρβαρος (barbaros), a stranger,—a term scornfully applied by the Greeks to all who did not speak their mellifluous tongue; probably it was used in mimicry of the incomprehensible speech of strangers (Yonge). Its popularity was revived in C19 ‘after a long period of obscurity’ (Swan).

A Latin female name signifying one of another country. The nickname is Bab.

A Greek name, meaning: The stranger. Originally applied by the ancient Greeks to those who spoke their language inelegantly and imperfectly; afterwards the name was elevated through being the appellation of a martyred saint. (Sanskrit) One born in the country of the bar­barians.