Has Komnenos/Komnena survived as a Greek surname in modern Greece?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, Modern Greek

The question about this is always whether it’s a survival or a revival.

The Greeks of Cargèse for example convinced themselves that their main clan (the Stephanopoli) were descendants of the Comneni, and got the paperwork from the King of France to prove it. As a result, almost everyone from the village is now surnamed Stephanopoli de Comnène. (And they didn’t pronounce it /komniˈnos/ either, when they spoke Greek, but /komˈnenos/. Which shows you it wasn’t a survival, it was them reading Comnène out loud.)

From Komnenos, I see that Konstantinos Varzos did the Comnenan geneaologies in 1984 (1500 pp, linked from the article), and found the last descendant of the royal line died in 1719. And even he may have been lying about it.

So, did the surname survive? Sure. Did the family, as a patronymically passed down surname of the erstwhile Byzantine dynasty? Not as obvious.

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