On Jan 22, 2009, at 1:18 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:37:47 -0500
> Andy <andy274 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 8:39 AM, Chris Doss
>> <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> By the way, can somebody tell me where the hell the word Graeci
>>> (Greeks) comes from? It doesn't sound remotely like "Hellenes."
>>> Was there some tribe or city-state at the wast of Greece, err I
>>> mean Hellas, by that name that the Romans took the word from?
>
> That is precisely the case, as I understand it.
>
>> <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/greece>
>> From Latin Graecia < Ancient Greek Γραικός (Graekos), a
>> character in
>> Greek mythology, the son of Thessalos, the king of Fthia, whom
>> Ἑλλάς
>> (Hellas, "Greece") and Ἕλληνες (Hellenes, "the Greeks") were
>> also
>> named after.
>
> Wikipedia gets it backwards. This mythological "Graecus" would
> be an eponymous ancestor, a back-formation from the name of the
> tribe. Like Romulus.
>
>> Any guesses why it would be Řecko in Czech?
>
> Sounds like the same word to me. There's a dialect variant
> of Graikos that doesn't have the initial gamma but does
> have a rough breathing. I don't know what the little
> diacritic over the R means in Czech, phonetically --
> is it some kind of fricative?
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
>
> Michael Smith
> mjs at smithbowen.net
> http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org
>
> ___________________________________
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Shane Mage Shane Mage
> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos