ამბარი

Originally derived from the Arabic "anbar" (whale substance), Old French ambre originally denoted what we now call ambergris. When Western Europe discovered fossilized tree resin washing up on similar shores, they applied the same name to it due to physical similarities. To resolve this homonymic confusion, French split the lexical field into ambre jaune (yellow amber) and ambre gris (grey amber). English subsequently adopted ambergris verbatim for the whale byproduct but dropped the modifier for the resin, shortening it simply to amber. Georgian retained the original Arabic phonetic root (ამბრი) exclusively for the whale substance, while using ქარვა for the gemstone. This asymmetrical linguistic evolution creates a classic translation hazard: inexperienced translators and automated parsers frequently conflate the historical roots, mistakenly translating English amber as ამბრი instead of ქარვა (and vice versa with ambergris).