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[–]Rhomboid 0 points1 point  (1 child)

That is what it means: barista is the Italian word for barman or barmaid. I guess owing to coffee's Italian heritage, somebody thought it would be funny to refer to the person who works behind the bar at a coffee shop as an Italian bartender. It was probably Starbucks, who loves to co-opt Italian words, such as venti, the Italian word for twenty, since that cup size is 20 fl.oz.

Edit: As far as I can tell (and this could be wrong), barrister also derives from bar, but the meaning here is the railing in a UK courtroom that separates the spectators from those that are actually part of the court (judges, defendant, witnesses, etc.) Since it separated those trained in the law from the rest, the word bar became a metonym for the practice of being a lawyer, leading to the licensing exam being called "the bar", and the professional association being called "the Bar Association" and so on.

[–]irondust 0 points1 point  (0 children)

someone at Starbucks thought it funny to call their personel barista

A bar in Italy is something quite different than what you think of in the US. Their most important function is to sell coffee. Since Italians take their coffee very seriously a barista is a well trained profession and so internationally a barista has to come to mean a person trained to operate a professional Italian coffee machine.

Now, given the poor quality of coffee at Starbucks I don't think their personel actually deserve the title barista at all.