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Day: March 4, 2017
What does the last name “Galifianakis” mean?
-akis is the patronymic suffix used in Crete; it’s a diminutive, like most patronymics in Greek surnames are. The surname in Greek is Galifianakis Γαλιφιανάκης or Galyfianakis Γαλυφιανάκης; I see the upsilon surname much more frequently online (except with reference to Zach himself). Galifianos means “from Galifa”; there are references online to a Galifian carnival, […]
In Greek, when do you use Iota, Eta and Upsilon? What’s the difference?
So, here’s the mainstream answer. 🙂 Greek had iota, eta, and upsilon as different letters, because they used to be pronounced differently: Iota was always an /i/ Eta was a long /ɛː/. In fact, in many archaic variants of the Greek alphabet, it was written as an epsilon /e/; that was the case in Athens […]