The village of Mgar, where the famous monastery is located, is part of the epicenter of Kartvelian toponyms in Ukraine, surrounded by such names as Poltava, Sula, Lubni and Terni. The word looks so Kartvelian that there is no point in looking for an interpretation of the toponym in Ukrainian dictionaries, especially since they do not have any explanation for the word "mgar". But the Georgian dictionary of Chanturia has an interesting word "მღარავი/მღარველი" [mgaravi/mgarveli], meaning "milling machine operator". Both words have "mgar" as a stem. And what relation it has to the machine or to its essence, perhaps, can be seen in the Laz dictionary, where the word მღარუ is translated as "something roaring".
In turn, in Georgian the word "mgeri" (მღერი) is "scabies", "scabies". Such an interpretation can explain the appearance of one of the monasteries in Mgari, which in ancient times served as a medical institution. The author of the idea is Nana Kobaladze.
And the last one is another Laz word მგარა (mgara) meaning "weeping". The soft sign in "мгарь" stands for any vowel, hence, the equation is impeccable technically. And semantically "lament" and "monastery" are close too.
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