A Udi-related explanation also deserves consideration within this broader Albanian setting. Gippert and Schulze tentatively connect Gargar with a repetition of Caucasian Albanian q̇ar, meaning “tribe.” Their identification of the Albanian Gargars with Udi-related speakers is a separate proposal from the Rutul–Tsakhur hypothesis, but it provides another reason to investigate the name within the linguistic landscape of Albania and its neighbours. A counter-argument to the Udi association is that Strabo explicitly places Gargareans in the northern Caucasus, while Udis (as far as we know) have historically inhabited the southern Caucasus.

This eastern localization may also help frame a possible connection with Gugark/Gugareti/Gogarene, the Iberian–Armenian border region whose name has an obscure origin. Rather than considering the resemblance between Gargar and Gugark in isolation, it would allow us to investigate the names within a more connected regional setting. An Albanian or neighbouring East Caucasian explanation is therefore worth exploring, since the word's etymology can be explained neither in Georgian nor Armenian.

Concerning Sodi, there is another potentially significant connection. Pliny mentions them among mountain peoples in his description of Albania’s borderlands. In Moktsevay Kartlisay (Conversion of Kartli), the Soji appear alongside the inhabitants of Kkhoeti/Kukheti in the account of Nino’s preaching at Katsareti, in the broader region of present-day Kakheti. The proposed identification of Sodi with Soji would therefore point toward Albania’s western neighbourhood, again considerably closer to Albania than my earlier placement in Chechnya or Ingushetia. Pliny's description of them as a "mountain people" possibly misleadingly makes most readers interpret it as a people living deep in the Caucasus mountains, but the mountains he was referring to was most likely the Tsiv-Gombori range in central Kakheti (where they are documented to live according to Georgian chronicles), though perhaps the Sodi did extend to the Greater Caucasus as well, this much we don't know.

What interests me is how these clues connect: the geographical accounts make the eastern linguistic comparisons more compelling, while the names and neighbouring populations help build a coherent regional picture. These remain proposed identifications, but together they give me a stronger basis for reconsidering the map than similarities between names alone. The above creates a far stronger argument for the placement of Gargareans in the Samur basin or its close vicinity.