View Message

I have seen one Jewish name that is Greek in origin, but can't remember it. I think it was from a place name.
I believe that the most Jews settled in Greece were from elsewhere in Europe, Spain or Venice, fleeing persecution, and finding security in the countries of the Ottoman Empire. As a result I'm guessing that many Greek Jews would have Sephardic or perhaps Arabic names, Arabic being one of the languages of Spain before the expulsion of Jews and Moors (c.1490).
It might be worthwhile to do a search for material on the Jews of Salonika/Thessaloniki. This town had a thriving Jewish community before the Nazi genocide.
You might be interested to know that the Jewish surname Kalman is a corruption of the Greek Kalonymos, "good name". This is a translation of the Hebrew phrase shem tov, which has some religious significance. I don't know if this name originated in Greece or elsewhere; how old the name is; or how it got to be Kalman. This last, as Kálmán, is also a Hungarian surname, with no connection to the Jewish surname. Confusing, eh!