Ok, you really need to let this go...
Words mean something. D&D uses many, many words that correspond to the real world. Barbarian, cleric, fighter, wizard, rogue, sword, dagger, mace, spear, elf, dwarf, human, and on and on and on and...
Yes, words do mean something.
And part of that meaning is always contextual. As a trained linguist and a former professional translator, I appreciate that words have meaning as much as anyone here. But the reality is that the meaning of words is always at least somewhat contextual. Always. And in the present context, the meaning of the words in question is to designate D&D
classes. Not culture. Not real world analogs. Not your strangely obsessive version of what an urchin
must be. In your example, you cited examples of "real world" words that apparently must have the "real world" meaning. This is your supposed support for your pedantic obsession with urchins and barbarians. Yet you blithely list "clerics" while having no problem ignoring that "real world" clerics have absolutely nothing to do with the D&D cleric class, nor has the word cleric
ever aligned with the D&D class. At best, the class should be called "clergy" rather than "cleric", and even then the association is fringe and tangental. So if you are expecting to retain any credibility, then I expect that you will immediately remove any clerics from your game. Yet you haven't been arguing that. Which means you are willing to allow the D&D context to impact the meaning of the word "cleric." Your unwillingness to do the same with "barbarian" is a crystal clear demonstration that this is an obsessive personal bias rather than a cogent, reasoned point.
Barbarian corresponds to the real world equivalent of barbaric tribes, Conan, etc. At no time in the real world were street urchins considered to be barbarian hordes.
And if you hadn't already sacrificed credibility, this line would absolutely kill it. You mention how barbarian (
has to) correspond to "real world equivalents", and immediately proceed to list Conan? Seriously? As if
anything in the Conan books is representative of "real world" barbarian cultures? For that matter, since you are so obsessed that the "real" meaning of words be retained against all reasoned arguments to the contrary, then perhaps you need to do the research to recognize that the term "barbarian" was applied by the Greeks to the ANE cultures, so if that is the case I expect that your game world does not include
any barbarians that are not from a pseudo-Middle Eastern or Turkish culture.
And for the record, there have been
many times that groups of poor, homeless people have been described as living in "barbaric" conditions.
If you want to change the meaning for your game, have at it. Enjoy. For my games, I'm going to retain the intended meanings of those words.
Ok... so we know your games will not include clerics and non-middle eastern barbarians. (And I haven't even approached the issues with bards, druids, et al.)...