Was Napoleon Greek?

Andrew Baird’s block on me means I cannot reply to commenters to his answer, either.

So, Bill Killernic: Laure Junot, Duchess of Abrantes was the person who circulated the notion that Napoleon was Greek. She claimed that Napoleon had proposed to her mother, Panoria Stephanopoli, a Corsican Greek.

Her claims are often repeated by flattered Greeks, but they are not seriously accepted by any historian. I’ve been through all the baptismal records of the Greek community in Corsica, because I’ve had a research interest in it (and published a few papers on it): there was never a Kalomeros family there, and Kalomeros doesn’t really make sense as a Greek surname anyway.

What is true is that the Greek community was an elite in Ajaccio at the time of Napoleon’s birth, and one of the Stephanopolis, Demetrius, sponsored young Napoleon to go to military academy at the age of 10. (See my paper at http://www.24grammata.com/wp-con…, p. 40)