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People's names
A Greek child is given its name when it's baptized. At right are outlined the ways a name is traditionally given.
By Gregory C. Emmanuel
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Emmanuel : Introduction : People's names
Traditionally in Greece the first son is named after his paternal grandfather and the first daughter is given the maternal grandmother's name. So Constantine G. Emmanuel bears his grandfather's first name, Constantine, and Elli Efrosini Emmanuel is named after Elli, her mother's mother. If the first child is a daughter, then she is named after the paternal grandmother, so Eleni P. Lekanidou was named after her father's mother, whose name was Eleni. Knowing this it becomes easy to trace a name through past generations.
Greek children are informally given their patronymic (their father's first name) as a middle name, and sometimes they're formally given their own middle name. The patronymic is used to perpetuate the parents' names and to distinguish between family members with the same first and last names. So, there's Gregory C. Emmanuel whose father is Costas, Gregory Wilson N. Emmanuel whose middle name is Wilson and father is Nikos, and Gregory William D. Emmanuel whose middle name is William and father is Dimitri.
Sometimes a place name can be associated with a person's name. For example, we have the word nisiotis, which in greek means islander, attached to Grandfather Gregory's surname because he was from an island.
A Greek woman traditionally takes her husband's surname, and takes her husband's first name as a middle name. So Ketty B. Georgiadou became Ketty C. Emmanuel after her marriage to Costas G. Emmanuel.
Greek names often have a common, shortened form: Ekaterini is Ketty, Nicholas is Nikos, Constantine is Costas, etc. In this website I've used both the common and the shortened names of people. In some cases Greek names have an English counterpart; the Greek name Konstantinos is Constantine in English, and Nikolaos is Nicholas.
The Greek names in this website are written with English characters and as a result some cannot be pronounced properly. This will be corrected in the future, with the creation of a Greek version of this website.
To learn about the origins and evolution of the Emmanuel family surname, please read the story The Family Surname (1800 - present)
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