[Surname] Re: Meaning of the surname Serntari?
by Jim Young (guest)
5/13/2008, 8:22 AM
Taking into account that the Greek letter combination -nt- represents the sound of the English letter D (Greek D, or delta, sounds like our th- in 'this' and 'that') we can assume that serdari would be the usual spelling in the Roman script.
I think that this is a non-Greek word, perhaps from the Turkish serdar, which my dictionary translates as "commander-in-chief". It's probably therefore a loan word identifying the original bearer's office or status, and dating to the time that the Greeks were subjects of the Ottoman Sultans.