Mosaic of fishermen from Leptis Magna

In Greek this word became a by-word for any kind of dangerous sailing passage, whether or not it were strictly a strait. This in turn is according to Beekes related to συρτός 'swept, dragged along' and σύρω 'drag', both derived from Indo-European *twer- twirl.

It even made an appearance in Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautika (Book IV), as the Argonauts sailed their way home from Colchis in the Caucasus:

Ruins of Leptis Magna, along the Gulf of Syrtis (Sidra)

The geographer Strabo recalled its danger for shipping saying: "On this account sailors travel along the coast at a distance, taking care lest they are caught off their guard and driven into these gulfs by winds." This became almost proverbial: Virgil called it 'inhospita Syrtis'.

These words are in turn likely borrowings from ancient Greek Σύρτις, close to modern Sirte in Libya on the Gulf of Sidra, which was famous in antiquity for its dangerous sandbars and shoals:

Though the word is attested only late, it likely arose from an unattested West Georgian dialect word earlier in Middle Georgian since similar words are found in Imeretian სორატი soraṭi 'footpath' and Megrelian საროტი saroṭi 'strait; footpath'.

Which translates: "On the south was a broad strait, which held meadows and gorges of the South Caucasus and North Caucasus."

The word is first attested only very late, in a late 19th century book of historical and ethnographic research: სამხრეთად, ყოფილა ვრცელი სრუტე, რომელსაც ჰსჭერია ამიერისა და იმიერ–სასქართველოს ღელე–მინდვრები

The Strait of Hormuz

Weekly Georgian Etymology: სრუტე sruṭe 'nautical strait', from Middle Georgian *sruṭe strait, narrows, path, metathesis of Greek Σύρτις Gulf of Sidra, known for its treacherous sandbars and reefs, from συρτός swept, dragged, from PIE *twer- twirl, swirl. Originally dialectal.

It seems likely that this word ბრწყინვალე brc̣q̇invale 'brilliant, bright' reflects something very deep about sound-symbolism in Georgian and other related languages.

From my paper "Expressive Constructions in Georgian and other Caucasian Languages": https://www.academia.edu/79834665/Expressive_Constructions_in_Georgian_and_other_Caucasian_Languages https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/006630

Across languages, such words often feature reduplication or particular kinds of consonants or vowels, and we see this too in Georgian expressive constructions. But many expressives in Georgian also feature very large consonant clusters, with 4, 5 or even more consonants in a row:

From my paper "Expressive Constructions in Georgian and other Caucasian Languages": https://www.academia.edu/79834665/Expressive_Constructions_in_Georgian_and_other_Caucasian_Languages https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/006630

Does this root have any origin beyond Proto-Kartvelian? There are no particular good candidates in the region. A more likely explanation is that this old root reflects a feature of so-called expressive words which depict sensory language in an affective or mimetic way:

The Svan form is interesting for a different reason. Normally if Georgian has /c̣/ where Svan has /č̣/, that means they go back to a palatal *c̣ʲ. This would however result in /č̣/ in Zan lgs, which we don't see. So it seems already in Proto-Kartvelian there was variation: *berc̣q̇- and *berc̣ʲq̇-.

Something different happened in Laz: in Laz, you often see long-distance assimilation of consonants, and *q̇ sometimes shifts to /ḳ/, /r/ is often lost, and nasal consonants are often inserted in Zan languages:

*berc̣q̇- > *ṗerc̣q̇- > *ṗec̣q̇ > *ṗec̣ḳ > *ṗenc̣ḳ- > *ṗinc̣ḳ-

This is a little like how Middle English words that started with 'n' often ended up as vowel-initial words, and vice-versa some vowel initial words were reanalyzed as beginning with 'n':

In the case of Megrelian, the first person prefix is much more complicated than Georgian: phonetic variants like v-, b-, p-, and ṗ- all occur, depending on what consonant follows after them. What likely happened: the original b- of the root was reanalyzed as the person prefix.

The root is robustly supported across Kartvelian lgs, albeit with some rather irregular sound reflexes:

Megrelian რწკინუა rc̣ḳinua sparkle, glitter
Laz ნოფინწკალე nopinc̣ḳale spark
Svan ლიბჷრჭყალე libərč̣q̇ale sparkle, glitter

What happened to the Zan lgs' initial consonants?

The word is formally a noun derived from a participle, itself derived from a causative verb:

ბრწყ-ინ-ვ-ალ-ე
brc̣q̇-in-v-al-e
spark/glow-CAUS-MAS-PART-NOMNL

The /v/ is probably due to analogy with verbal masdar forms: *brc̣q̇-in-al- with ბრწყინვა brc̣q̇inva 'to glow, glitter'.

The word is first attested in the early 6th century text Martyrdom of St Eustathius of Mtskheta: ღმერთმან-ღა ღრუბელსა უბრძანის, და მოეფინის ბრწყინვალებაჲ მზისაჲ და მთოვარისაჲ დააბნელის 'God commands a cloud and the brilliance of the Sun and Moon attenuates and it becomes dark'

The Harrowing of Hell, by 16th century Greek-Venetian iconographer Markos Bathas

Weekly Georgian Etymology: ბრწყინვალე brc̣q̇invale 'brilliant, bright', from Old Georgian ႡႰႼႷႨႬႥႠႪႤႡႠ brc̣q̇invaleba, from Proto-Kartvelian *berc̣q̇-/*berc̣ʲq̇ spark, glow. Paschal Week is traditionally called ბრწყინვალე შვიდეული Brc̣q̇invale Švideuli, lit. 'Brilliant Septuple'.

It's available at the Georgian National Corpus, which shares many of the same texts as the TITUS Project: gnc.gov.ge/gnc/page?pag...

Saint Queen Shushanik

And the eponymous heroine of the oldest extended text in the Georgian language, The Martyrdom of Queen Shushanik (ca. 476 AD), also derived her name from this root. So while it is a loan, it has also been a part of attested Georgian literature from the very beginning.

It's also worth mentioning that Georgian has borrowed this word more than once from multiple sources. In Old Georgian you could also say სოსანი sosani, which was probably borrowed from Middle Persian 𐭮𐭥𐭮𐭠𐭭 sōsan.

It is likely in one of such contexts that Georgian შროშანი šrošani was analogized to the entirely separate word შრეში šreši b/c of similar appearance and practical use. Such analogies are common across lgs: Middle English femelle became female because of the unrelated word male.

Edible asphodel

The traditional Georgian name for this latter flowering plant is შრეში šreši, from the Parthian 𐭮𐭫𐭩𐭱 šriš. Its name is related to the modern Persian word سریش seriš 'lime, glue', because its tubers when crushed into powder and mixed with water become a natural glue.

Edible Asphodel

Edible Asphodel

The answer is that it was probably the result of analogy of day lilies with another very similar kind of flower from the same biological family Asphodelaceae, the edible asphodel. This plant produces similar leaf shoots, flowers and tubers, which can be eaten when boiled.

What all these forms have in common is a sequence sibilant-vowel-sibilant-(vowel)-/n/, where the sibilant is either /s/ or /š/. All of the languages thus resemble the Georgian word, especially Hebrew and Armenian. But where did the Georgian /r/ come from? It seems incongruous.

This root is not found in the sister lgs, and so has no Kartvelian origin. It is instead widely found in neighboring lgs across the ancient Near East:

Syriac ܫܘܫܢܬܐ šūšanəṯā
Akkadian 𒌑𒅆𒅖𒉡 ⁠šišnu
Hebrew שושן šōšān
Arabic سَوْسَن sawsan
Greek σοῦσον
Armenian շուշան šušan

The word is first attested in 9th century Old Georgian texts like the translation of Ephrem the Assyrian's Exhortation to Monks: შეუძლო შემოსად სამოსელი, ვითარცა ერთი შროშანთაგანი "He could put on a garment like one of the lilies"

Weekly Georgian Etymology: შროშანი šrošani 'lily', from Old Georgian ႸႰႭႸႠႬႨ šrošani, corruption of older *šošani, from Hebrew שושן šošan, from Egyptian 𓊃𓈙𓈖𓆸 zešen lotus flower. It gets its form by analogy with შრეში šreši edible asphodel, itself from Parthian 𐭮𐭫𐭩𐭱 šriš.

Georgian clusters and that cluster in particular can indeed be tricky. The thing to remember is that the Georgian /r/ is an apical tap or trill like in Spanish, so your tongue is moving forward in the mouth from ღ to რ.