SAVDARATI

A fragment of the famous "Decree in honor of Protogenes", a citizen of ancient Ukrainian Olbia:

"... The defectors reported that the Galatians and Scyri had formed an alliance and gathered large forces, which would appear in winter, and in addition, that the Fisamites, Scythians and Savdarats were looking for a fortified place, just as they were afraid of the cruelty of the Galatians..."

"Reader on the History of the Ancient World" edited by V. V. Struve, Vol. 2, "Uchpedgiz", -M., 1951

Let's leave aside the "Galatians", who are not Galatians at all, but Gauls as "Galati" is "country of the Gauls". This has already been discussed. Now let's turn our attention to the "Savdarats".

The presence of the same Megrelian toponymic suffix "-at", as in the word "Galati", makes us perceive this word not as the name of a people, but as the name of a country - "Savdarati" ("Savdareti", in Georgian manner. Klimov wrote about the correspondence of the Zan "-at" to the Georgian "-et" with reference to Marr). The word is an obvious and close relative of such well-known Georgian toponyms as "Saprangeti" (France) and "Saberdzneti" (Greece). What makes them related is the tautological use of two toponymic morphemes at once in one word: the prefix "sa-" and the suffix "-at". Just as the roots of the words "Saprangeti" and "Saberdzneti" are "prangi" and "berdzeni", in the word "Savdarati" we must consider the root "avdari". This Georgian word has already appeared in our research as a key to the etymology of the Russian "vedra" - "bad weather". This is exactly how, "bad weather", the word "avdari" is translated in the dictionary of Ariane Chanturia. And "Savdarati", therefore, is ideally interpreted as "country of bad weather".