Saberdzneti

Saberdzneti (Georgian: საბერძნეთი [saberdznetʰi]) was an ambiguous geographic term used in medieval and early modern Georgian historical sources to refer to Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire,[1] while berdzeni (Georgian: ბერძენი) was a name for people who lived in those states.[2] Later the name saberdzneti came to mean simply "Greece" and berdzeni "the Greek".[3] Saberdzneti literally means "Land of the Berdzens" (i.e. "Land of the Greeks.)[4]

The ethnonym berdzeni is presumed to be related to the pre-Greek Pelasgians (Πελασγοί, Pelasgoi), it being derived from the phonetical variant pel of the root ber. The dz of ber-dz-eni may be a variant of the Pel-as-goi, as s/z may have changed to dz in Georgian. This is also indicated by the existence of the stem bersen alongside berdzen in Georgian surnames like "Bersenadze".[5]

There is also another theory that berdzeni was actually coined from the Georgian word "wise" brdzeni (Georgian: ბრძენი),[6] thus saberdzneti would literally mean "land where the wise men live", possibly referring to the Ancient Greek philosophy.[7] The same root is also adopted in Abkhazian and Greece is referred as barzentyla (Барзентәыла).