KARTVELIAN FRANCE

The project BETWEEN TWO IBERIAS proves Kartvelian past of the ancient world. The evidences are numer-
ous articles on academia.edu and dozens of hours of video-lectures on youtube. The previous projects
chapters were Kartvelian Spain, Kartvelian Turkey, Kartvelian Greece, Kartvelian Albania, Kartvelian
Ukraine. The proofs of their Kartvelian historical and linguistic past are abundant and a matter to criticize
for anyone who feels capable. Given the obvious continuity of the pankartvelian linguistic evidences of the
ancient world we have no right not to consider the French toponyms as being of Kartvelian origin as well.
Especially given that such an approach gives clear and systemic explication for geographic names of vague
etymologies, if any.

The word Kartvelian should be understood as pertaining to the Kartvelian language family, which consists
of four languages of Georgia: Georgian (Kartvelian), Megrelian, Laz, and Svan.

Most of the analysed toponyms officially are of disputed or unknown origin.

PARIS / LUTETIA
What does Paris associate with well? It wont be a matter of a big dispute to claim that absinth (worm-
wood) and clochard (tramp) are among its symbols.

In Georgian pharisi means exactly wormwood:

The old name of the French capital is Lutetia, an impeccable Georgian trademark ETI-toponym which trans-
lates as land of luti. The word luti in the Georgian dictionary of Ariane Chanturia means exactly tramp:
NANTES
The old name of the city is Namneti, which is another impeccable Georgian toponymic construction
NAM+N+ET+I with nami meaning dew, precipitation; -n- being the Old Georgian plural suffix; -et being
the most popular Georgian toponymic suffix with the help of which the names of Georgias regions are
formed (Svaneti, Hevsureti, Mtiuleti, Kakheti, etc.); and -i being the Georgian nominative case ending.
Thus, the overall meaning of the construction would be land of precipitations, which coincides with char-
acteristics of the local climate known for weekly heavy rains in summer.

LE CANNET
The name of this French commune interprets perfectly and, what is more important, systemically from the
Kartvelian point of view (and from nowhere else). Beside the already mentioned toponymic ET-suffix, it also
includes the Old Georgian plural N-suffix added to the root kan(i). The Georgian meaning for the root
would be open mine (), which altogether translates the name as land of open mines. The commune
is historically known exactly for its bauxite open mines (actually, the name bauxite comes from the name
of another commune in southeastern France Les Baux).
MARSEILLE
The abundance of kartvelisms in South France enables us to interprete the rest of the local toponyms from
the Kartvelian point of view as well. Thus, the ancent forms of Marseille, which are Marselia and Mas-
salia, show the Kartvelian -EL and -AL suffixes. The root in such case might be the Megrelian masdar mar-
sua meaning hedging. Note the presence of the passive participle marsili (hedged) in the Megrelian dic-
tionary:

USTARITZ
The Basque town of Ustaritz in South France contains the word ustari that means theory in Basque and
letter in Georgian (see the List of Basque-Georgian Correspondences).

ARTAGNAN
The name of the native town of DArtagnan is pronounced [artanian], which is almost an ideal Georgian
adjective artaniani, which is a dervation from an artani noun. The word artani is a name of two Geor-
gian villages Zemo Artani and Kvemo Artani. Thus, artaniani would mean a person from Artani or some-
thing related to Artani. The meaning can be traced to the Megrelian arti word which translates as one.

PERPIGNAN
Similarly, the word Perpignan; can and should be interpreted as a Kartvelian perpiniani adjective, derived
from some perp(ini)- root. This root exists in Kartvelian dictionaries in the words pherphli (, ash-
es), pherphuri (, facial colour), and pherpheta (, fat man). The meaning is not deter-
mined yet, but its not that crucial, since the morphological construction is impeccably Kartvelian.
AVIGNON
The same word composition can be traced in another geographic name AVIGNON, which is pronounced
as [avinion]. Given that in Latin it used to be known as AVENIO, we have a right (or, to be more exact, an
obligation) to assume that the original name was the Kartvelian adjective AVENIONI derived from avena
meaning evil-tongued. Please, note that the Georgian dictionary lists the adjective aveniani in the same
entry and in the same meaning of evil-tongued:

SAVOIA
The history of the French region is connected with the tribe of Boii, who arrived in Northern Italy from
across the Alps. While the presence of the BOI-root in Savoie/Saboie is acceptable, the problem is in justify-
ing the SA-prefix, which does not exist in IE languages. But in Georgian language its not only fully legiti-
mate, but also is another fundamental toponymic prefix meaning place of <the root>. Thus, Savoia per-
fectly becomes place of boii if interpreted from the Kartvelian point of view.

SAINTES / SAINTONGE
Another example of the Kartvelian SA-construction in France is the ancient name of the town Saintes
Saintonge which impeccably represents the Kartvelian toponymic construction SA+<root>+E:
SA+INTONG+E. The root in this case will be intong. Given the tradition of the Kartvelian languages to omit
vowels, as well as the necessity to vocalize the consonant that follows the voiced N, the root INTONG might
be the Basque plural form of INTONAK with the AK-ending which is very popular among the French topo-
nyms (Cognac being the brightest example). The singular form will be INTON, the meaning of which is un-
clear, although INTON is a registered French surname. Since -ON is very likely to be a suffix, the root INT
might be the root of the Kartvelian masdar inteba meaning to be inflamed.

LOUBET, LIBOURNE, SALUVII

One of the most exciting chapters of the project Between Two Iberias answers the question, what that na-
tion that lived all over the ancient world and spoke Kartvelian languages was. The project recovers the for-
gotten nation of Lubes as that pankartvelian community from Portugal to India and from Estonia to
Mozambique. You indeed will find their traces all over: Luwians, Chalybes, Libya, Lebanon, Liburni, Albania,
Lvov, Lubni, Lubech, Lublin, Ljubljana, Lubeck, Lobetani, Llivia, Liverpool, and even Olbia and Olympos. All of
those toponyms contain that LUB-root, that always combines with Kartvelian morphemes and explains
semantically from the Kartvelian point as well. The French part of this chapter has at least three remarkable
geographic names. One of them is another town in South France Loubet which is an impeccable Geor-
gian toponymic construction LOUBETI land of loubi. The map of Ptolemy shows on this exact place the
name of Olbia, which, according to the strict rules of Megrelian morphology (the trademark abstract O-
prefix and an omitted vowel) perfectly recovers to OL(U)BIA land of lubi. The hypotesis is reinforced even
more with the Strabos tribe of SALUVII which he locates in the same region. According to Georgian mor-
phology, SALUVE is another very popular way to say land of luvi. While the alternation beween B-V is a
well-known phenomen that originates from Ancient Greek. The name of LIBOURNE may be a total corre-
pondence to Ancient Croatian (which is also highly Kartvelian) tribe of LIBURNI/LYBURNI, which is an im-
peccable Old Georgian plural form of the adjective LIBURI, which, in its turn, derives from the name of LUBI
(the ypsilon represented the [u]-sound in Ancient Greek). But the official version says the French town got
its name from the English surname of Leybourne. It doesnt matter much, since ancient Britain used to be
very Kartvelian as well and has a chapter of its own within the project BETWEEN TWO IBERIAS. So,
Leybourne should be the same Kartvelian construction LUBURNI.

AQUITAINE (AKVITANIA)
This name is a member of an already vast group of ancient toponyms from the maps of Ptolemy, having the
same mophological construction of undoubtfully Kartvelian origin. They are LAIETANI, CARETANI, CERE-
TANI, EDETANI, ORETANI, COSSITANI, LUSITANI, LUDETANI, BASTITANI, TURDETANI in Spain; CORETANI in
Britain; CARPETANI in Ukraine; VELETI in Poland, NEMETI in Germany, etc. The ET-suffix which is present in
all those names, can be explained exclusively from the height of Kartvelian (Georgian) language where it is
highly popular, is used to form toponyms, and means land of. In all the cases the root of a toponym al-
ways perfectly interprets from the Kartvelian point of view too.

In case of AKVITANIA, being a derivation from AKVETI (land of akva) the root akva () is a Megrelian
word meaning fat buttocks. So, AKVETI would be land of fat people, while AKVETANI would be its adjec-
tive.

There is another interesting explanation of the etymology. Its a rare Georgian word akviti, which means
grass under snow in the dictionary of Ariane Chanturia.
OCCITANIA
Similarly, Occitania should be interpreted as a derivation from the OCCETI toponym, which means land of
occi. The number of possible root readings is huge. Its very likely to have relation to Italian OSCHI as well
as to the Basque self-ethnonym of EUSKI. For now the roots Kartvelian meaning is less important than
Kartvelian morphological structure of the word.

TARBES / TARBELI
The origin of the Southern Frances town of Tarbes becomes clear once we find its cognate on the map of
Ptolemy, who placed the tribe of TARBELI more or less in the same region. The clearly Georgian adjective
TAR(E)BELI comes from the Georgian masdar TAREBA () meaning vending in the dictionary of Ari-
ane Chanturia. The vowel is omitted due to the strong Kartvelian tradition of doing so.

GAUL
The ancient name of France is of highly disputed origin, if any. Just take into account the impeccably
Kartvelian construction gauli with the trademark ULI-suffix.

Those who have certain amount of knowledge of Georgian language know that if there is no R-, nor L-letter
in the root, you have a right to add either UL-suffix, or UR-suffix. From this point of view a GAULI word to-
tally corresponds to a GAURI word.

And GAURI unbelieveably means grasseyer, i.e., to pronounce R in French manner:

http://verbs_ka_ru.academic.ru/4823/

FRANCE
This one is disputable. But since the overall Kartvelian presence in France already is a system, we have no
scientific right to ignore this one. Especially, since it can be a sensation.

The Georgian word for France is SAPHRANGETI, a tautological toponymic structure that has both SA-prefix
and ET-suffix, that duplicate functions of each other. The root is PHRANGI, which leaves no doubts as to its
kinship with FRANK.

But if we give ourselves enough freedom to assume that SAPRANGETI might bear a bit different root
PERANGI (and we know that Geogian words tend very much to lose vowels, exactly like French words do),
we will end up having SAPERANGETI, which is land of perangi, which is land of shirts, because perangi is
shirt in French.

Were the Gauls the first to wear shirts? Hard to say. But at least someone named Anna Blase in her book
History in Costumes: From Pharaohs to Dandies which was published in Saint Petersburg (Olma-Press,
2002), says that on some Hadrians coins Gaul is depicted as a woman dressed in a long-sleeved shirt. If all
that makes sense, the nation of franks quickly dissolves as a ghost.

To anticipate some comments, the and letters are often interchageable in Kartvelian dictionaries.

VERCINGETORIX
The name of the legendary warrior is highly like to contain a Kartvelian toponym. Once we get rid of the
RIX-part which means king, we are left with VERCINGETO part, which is supposed to mean the name of
the land Vercingetorix was the king of.

VERCINGETO easily transforms into VERCINGETI (the gender-conscious IE O/A-endings correspond to the
Kartvelian genderless nominative case I-ending), which is land of vercingi. As it was already suggested
above, the NG-part may actually be NAK. To claim so we need to assume omittance of a vowel and vocali-
zation of an unvoiced K-sound. Both phemomena are totally typical for the Kartvelian family. If so, then
VERCING turns into VERCINAK, which is the Basque plural form of the VERCIN noun. Or BERCIN, if we take
into consideration the B-V alternation, very popular in Spanish language. The word bercin (more exactly,
bertzin) does exist in the Basque dictionary meaning spotted cattle, turning VERCINGETI into land of spot-
ted cattle.
BASTIA
Since Corsica is officialy France, the name of its main city should be added to the group of the French
Kartvelian toponyms. The root BASTI translates from Georgian as (dance) tapping and is present all over
the ancient world: BASTETANI, BASTULI (both Spain), BASTAR (Albania), SABASTE (former name of the Turk-
ish Sivas), SEVASTOPOLIS, BASTARNI (Ukraine).

AUVERGNE
The city of Auvergne is considered to be a crooked form of ARVERNI, the name of an ancient French tribe.
This name starts with the Georgian negative AR-prefix followed by the BERN-root, which is a plural form of
the noun BERI. This noun translates from Georgian as old and is also one of the key toponyms of the an-
cient world. We find it, in partucular, in North Spanish Bernedo (Berneti, land of beri), which coincides
with the ancient town Oluba (land of lubi from Megrelian, compare to Olbia) inhabited by the tribe Beroni
(see Beriain, the Basque suburb of Pamplona). As to the lexical meaning of the root, compare it to the an-
cient Ukrainian tribe of drevliane ancient people.

ARMORICANI
The name of one more French tribe starts with the Kartvelian negative AR(A)-prefix. We already saw this in
Spain, where Ptolemy told us about the ARAVACI tribe. If we assume that AR is Georgian and means NOT,
then we should agree the name translates as NOT VACI and had to be given to a tribe, neighbouring anoth-
er tribe called VACI in order not to confuse them. And indeed, the same map of Ptolemy showed us VACCEI,
a tribe which neighboured the ARAVACI.

So, in France we should apply the same method, which means we need to find some MORICI tribe, in com-
parison to which another tribe could have been caled ARMORICI in order to be told from them. The tribe
MORICI existed indeed. It was part of what is known as Polabian Slavs in Germany:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polabian_Slavs
BITURIGES
The construction BITURIG is highly Kartvelian, although not really many Georgians themselves know about
that. This is a combination of an adjective BITURI with the now extinct definite article IG, which you will find
in that meaning in the great dictionary of immortal Ariane Chanturia. Today the Georgian language does
not use articles anymore.

And the meaning of the adjective BITURI can be traced from the masdar biturdeba, which clearly is de-
rived from this BITURI adjective and means making a fool of.

PICTONES
This one is really cool. Obviously, the same word was used to name the notorious tribe in pre-Roman Brit-
ain. We dont find this root in Kartvelian dictionaries. But suddenly it is recovered from Lithuanian lan-
guage, comparison of which against the languages of the Kartvelian family is an essential chapter of the
Between Two Iberias project. In particular, this comparison enabled us to reconstruct from the total oblivi-
on such an unbelieveable part of speech as Lithuanian masdar, proving extremely tight ties between Lithu-
anian and Georgian languages.

Thus, one of the words we paid attention to in Lithuanian dictionary was PIKTYBE, which we equalled to a
Georgian masdar PIKTOBA, formed out of a now non-existing root PIKTI. The meaning of the Lithuanian
PIKTYBE is evil, which suits perfectly the British tribe and may well be the word to describe the French
Pictones as well.
EBURONI
This French tribe gets on our list for the masdars EBUREBA and EBURDEBA having clear EBUR-roots in the
Georgian dictionary. The meaning is to get tangled.

SUESSIONES
Another highly mysterious toponym that may happen to be of global importance. The root SUA/SHUA is
dedicated special attention in our research, since its a root for the Georgian SVANETI, for a number of
Georgian fundamental words related to birth, as well as of such toponyms as SUETIA (Sweden), SWABIA
(Suebi) and more.

The reconstruction chain would be as follows:

SUESSIONES SUESSIONI SUESIONI SUETIONI of SUETI of land of SUA.

The applied rules of morphological transformation are using of double SS for desonorization of S between
vowels and alternation between T and S in Greek dialects.

VENETI
The tribe of Veneti appears all over the ancient world, starting with Troy (Eneti), then in Italy, in Ukraine, in
Baltic region and now, in France. The Veneti-Eneti duality is a consequence of the Svan-Ukrainian phenom-
enon of adding starting V to Georgian and Russian words.The Kartvelian meaning of the ENI root for now is
not clear, unlike the Kartvelian morphological structure of the toponym.

VOLCAE
Following the story in the previous paragraph, the starting V has a historical-linguistic right to be omitted.
Thus, the South France tribe of Volcae [volki] turns into olki, which, in its turn, means region in Georgian,
while olka means army or people:
CALETES, CATURIGES, CUGERNI, TIGURINI
These ancient French tribes represent purely Kartvelian structures KAL+ETI, KAT+UR+IGI, KUG+ER+N+I,
TIG+UR+IN+I. The roots meanings can be various. But the most important is their Kartvelian morphological
composition.

GERMANY
Since Franks are considered to be a Germanic tribe, the story of the Kartvelian origin of GERMANY would be
appropriate in the French chapter. The word GERMAN is a legitimate combination of the Megrelian root
GER(I) meaning wolf and the ergative case ending MAN. Since nouns in ergative case are used in Kartveli-
an sentences as subjects, the non-Kartvelian languages treat them as nouns in nominative case. Hence the
birth of the noun GERMAN.

MARI
The non-toponymic French vocabulary is overwhelmed with kartvelisms due to its highly Latin nature. See
the English, Spanish and Italian chapters for Georgian traces in Romanic languages, where you will find ex-
citing stories of the true origin of such words as amor, amigo, army, nation, candle, beber, essere, mandar,
much, ballena, chacal, corral, col, copa, future, gente, crocodile, lexical, liebre, muchacho, mundo, navigate,
noche, park, April, rio, rumba, sangre, sex, testicles, cebolla, trabajo, verano, virgen, iglesia and many many
more.

But a couple of purely French words find a sudden reflection in the Kartvelian family of their own. Among
them there is the Svan word MARE which means man and is a clear source for the French MARI:
HUIT
In Laz language the word WIT means ten. In French exactly the same word means eight. How can they be
the same thing? Only in case when they mean not the exact number but the base for the numeric system.
In decimal system the base is ten, in octal system the base is eight. So, the word WIT in both languages
means not a number, but the numeric system base. Note that both French and Georgian languages have
clear traces of the octal system: in both languages 80 is four twenties, while after 80 the principle of nam-
ing numbers changes.

So, the Kartvelian essence of the ancient France is as undoubtful as of any other country of the ancient
world. This new knowledge changes the history of France and of the world drastically and needs to be
spread and shared. Also more in-depth research is needed. Feel free to join. Feel free to ask your university
to support the project BETWEEN TWO IBERIAS. If you are smart, you know you wont regret.

Artem Ivantsov
Dnipro, Ukraine