[fsckboy]

>the very word "barista" is Italian

now hol' up

in English, we have a suffix -ist for a person who does something: machinist, pianist, flautist. In Italian, they instead use the suffixes -isto or -ista to mean the same thing (which suggests English got "ist" from Norman French)

what does this particular -ista do? stands at a bar, that's why they are bar-isti. What's a bar, in Italy? well, "bar" not an Italian word, they borrowed the word from English.