The individual elements of the name Bar-erib are relatively easy to translate, but the full meaning is a little more obscure. Bar is usually translated 'home', but is strictly any inhabited place, so 'camp' might be equally suitable here. Erib means 'lonely', but the significance of the word in this context is not completely clear. The name might mean no more than that this encampment was far removed from the main Camp of the Faithful on Amon Rûdh, or it might refer to the loneliness of the Men who inhabited that place. Indeed, both translations may be true to some extent, in that the Men of the camp were lonely because they were isolated from the chief settlement of Dor-Cúarthol.
We might even take it that Bar-erib was a notably lonely posting, as (for example) a watch-post occupied by a single guard. That would certainly help in the interpretation of the 'lonely' in its name, but Bar-erib is listed among the encampments and forts of the Land of Bow and Helm, and so it appears to have been rather more than an individual lookout post.
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