Author: Nick Nicholas

It’s an old surname: a scribe Niketas Mavronis is recorded in 1285: Σημειώματα-Κώδικες – View Simeioma The stem is pretty clearly μαύρος “black, swarthy”; the -vr- is something of a giveaway, and the name doesn’t particularly look Slavonic or Aromanian. (1285 is too early for Arvanite or Turkish.) The -ώνης could mean the surname is […]

I’ll start by saying that the expression (lit. “somewhere and where”) is unfamiliar to me. Which makes me curious when it became common. The related question, αραιά και που “sparsely and [some]where” refers to time: “occasionally, now and again”, rather than “in scattered locations, here and there”. The metaphorical use of spatial for temporal expressions […]

http://m.nisanyansozluk.com/?k=merak In Greek, μεράκι means: yearning love-sickness pride in one’s work (in the phrase με μεράκι “with merak”) A μερακλής on the other hand is a bon vivant, a connoisseur, someone who knows how to have a good time and who appreciates the finer things in life. And the verb μερακλώνομαι is to be in […]