Name of Greece

The English name Greece and the similar adaptations in other languages derive from the Latin name Graecia (Greek: Γραικία), literally meaning 'the land of the Greeks', which was used by Ancient Romans to denote the area of modern-day Greece. Similarly, the Latin name of the nation was Graeci, which is the origin of the English name Greeks.

Those names, in turn, trace their origin from Graecus, the Latin adaptation of the Greek name Γραικός (pl. Γραικοί), which means 'Greek', but its etymology remains uncertain. It is unclear why the Romans called the country Graecia and its people Graeci, but the Greeks called their land Hellas and themselves Hellenes. Several speculations have been made.

William Smith notes in his Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography that foreigners frequently refer to people by a different name (an exonym) from their native one (an endonym).[1]

Aristotle was the first to use the name Graeci (Γραικοί), in his Meteorology. He wrote that the area around Dodona and the Achelous River was inhabited by the Selli and a people, who had been called Graeci but were called Hellenes by his time.[2]

From that statement, it is asserted that the name of Graeci was once widely used in Epirus and the rest of the western coast of Greece. It thus became the name by which the Hellenes were known to the Italic peoples, who were on the opposite side of the Ionian Sea.[1]

According to Hesiod, in his Catalogue of Women, Graecus was the son of Pandora and Zeus and gave his name to the people who followed the Hellenic customs. His brother Latinus gave his name to the Latins.[3] Similarly, the eponymous Hellen is supposed to have given his name to the Greeks, or Hellenes.

In his Ethnica, Stephanus of Byzantium also states that Graecus, the son of Thessalus, was the origin of the name Graeci for the Hellenes.[4][5]

The name Yūnān (Persian: یونان‎), came through Old Persian during the Achaemenid Empire (550-333 BC). It was derived from the Old Persian Yauna for the Ionian Greeks (Ancient Greek: Ἰάονες, iāones), on the western coast of Asia Minor[6][7] and were the first Greeks to come into contact with the Persians. The term would eventually be applied to all the Greeks.[8] Today, words derived from Yūnān can be found in Persian, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kurdish, Armenian (as Yūnānistan "land of Yūnān"; -istan "land" in Persian), Arabic, Hebrew (Biblical and Modern)(Yavan יָוָן), Aramaic (identical to Hebrew), Indian languages (such as Hindi and Urdu), Pashto, Laz, Indonesian, and Malay.

The eastern part of the Roman Empire, which was predominantly Greek-speaking, gave rise to the name Ῥωμανία (Rhomania or Romania). In fact, for a long time that started in Late Antiquity, the Greeks called themselves Ῥωμαῖοι (sg. Ῥωμαῖος: Romans). Those terms or related ones are still sometimes used even in Modern Greek: Ρωμιός (from Ῥωμαῖος), Ρωμιοσύνη.

There was tension with Western Europe on how Roman the western and the eastern parts of the Roman Empire really were. The historian Hieronymus Wolf, after the Eastern Roman Empire had ceased to exist, was the first to call it the Byzantine Empire, the term that later became usual in the West. However, because it lasted almost 1000 years longer than the Western Roman Empire, Persians, Arabs, and Turks, all in the East, used and sometimes still use terms from Rhomania or Rome, such as Rûm, to refer to its land or people.

Government papers header "Hellenic State", 1828

From its establishment after the outbreak of the Greek War of Liberation in 1821, the modern Greek state has used a variety of official names, most often designating changes of regime.

• 1821–28: "Provisional Administration of Greece" (Προσωρινή Διοίκησις τῆς Ἑλλάδος), used by the provisional government before the international recognition of Greek autonomy (and later independence) in the London Protocol.
• 1828–32: "Hellenic State" (Ἑλληνική Πολιτεία), used under the governorship of Ioannis Kapodistrias. Along with the previous period, it is sometimes grouped together in the historiographic term "First Hellenic Republic".
• 1832–1924: "Kingdom of Greece" (Βασίλειον τῆς Ἑλλάδος), adopted after Greece was declared a monarchy in the London Conference of 1832, and retained until the abolition of the monarchy on 25 March 1924.
• 1924–35: "Hellenic Republic" (Ἑλληνική Δημοκρατία), known historiographically as the Second Hellenic Republic, from 1924 until the 10 October 1935 coup by Georgios Kondylis and the restoration of the monarchy.
• 1935–73: "Kingdom of Greece" (Βασίλειον τῆς Ἑλλάδος), from the restoration of the monarchy in 1935 to its abolition by the Regime of the Colonels junta on 1 June 1973. Between 1941–44 used by the internationally recognized Greek government in exile.
  • 1941–44: "Hellenic State" (Ἑλληνική Πολιτεία), used by the collaborationist government of Greece during the occupation by the Axis Powers in World War II.
• 1973–today: "Hellenic Republic" (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία), from the abolition of the monarchy by the military junta to the present day. However, the present Third Hellenic Republic is held to have begun in 1974, following the fall of the junta and the return of democratic rule.