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My very best friend is Greek (Evanthia) and has a very Greek family. She speaks the language and frequently visits her family in Greece. I've had the luck of knowing her since we were about 2 and took Greek lessons with her for a while (though nearly 2 decades later I've forgotten it all!). The recent questions about Greek names has made me realize some of my own, especially after visiting a website that Kassios offered to somebody.

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Being around a Greek family for such a long time, I've picked up a lot of things - the biggest being that their common naming practice (at least for this family) is to honor others by using the same name. I know a lot of people that do this but not in this way:

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Evanthia was named after her grandmother Evanthia. When we were little girls everyone called her Evanthitsa though. They don't anymore because she now has a little cousin (another Evanthia) who goes by Evanthitsa.

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Now, on the site Kassios provided it says this:

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"Both male and female names are often familiarized by the addition of a hypocoristic termination such as -akis, -oula or -ita, for example Petrakis from Petros, Nitsa from Eleni."

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My questions are 1) what exactly does that paragraph up there mean (lol) and 2) is 'ita' the same as 'itsa'? and 3) what is the male equivalent, if there is one?

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Thanks loads, in advance!

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edit: fixed a glaring spelling error. :) lol

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edit #2: went to that site Kassios referred to and, unfortunately, I'm not a student at Oxford so it won't let me search for names! Is there another reliable website with modern AND ancient Greek names that I can use?

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"Chan eil tuil air nach tig traoghadh"

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"Maybe surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel all alone
I just wanna go home
Oh I miss you, you know"
- 'Home', Michael Buble

This message was edited 2/11/2006, 3:22 PM