Greek boy names please!!

There is no wrong or right way to spell a name, so tell your friends they are good, they can pronounce it anyway they want since it's there names 😊

Hercules is Iraklis in Greek
Zeus is Dias
Ulysses is Odyseas

Hercules?

What about Oedipus? That would be noteworthy!

A few others that have come to mind overnight.

Iasonas (Jason).
I do actually like Leonidas (Leo/Leon).
Aias (pronounce each letter separately. Ajax in English) was on our long list.
A friend of mine has just had a baby and called him Hektoras (Hector) which is pretty cool.

@Wallabyone I think that's just a fashion thing as you say amongst non-first gen. I see it a lot - Anglicised or Latin names substituting for Greek. For example, Emilio and Christian are Latin names - not Greek. Personally I wouldn't opt for Angelos - if you ask me naming your child Angel is asking for trouble - but it is still popular in Greece. The only friend I've had called Leo was my age (late 30s) and another who has sadly passed who would have been in his mid 50s today. He was a Leonidas - I hear that name still being used in Greece these days and it's in the top 100. I can't comment on Cypriot names I'm afraid as I barely know anyone in that community.

The OP asked for Greek names so those are the suggestions made although some of us are trying to ascertain just how "Greek" they wanted the name to be. Sadly OP hasn't been back so we may never know.

I'm a Cypriot in the UK. Yes, I mean outdated, rather than classic. So here, names like Spiros, Savvas, Socratis, Athanasis aren't generally favoured by my fellow Greek Cypriots. Names like Angelo, Emilio, Leo/n, Christian, etc tend to be more on trend. Obviously this takes into account the fact that I am not 1st generation and that names become more anglicised here through the generations.

@Wallabyone do you mean trendy vs not trendy? All Greek names will be "old fashioned" - they're either pretty biblical or Ancient. As a Greek Greek overseas I don't see the trend you refer to. Are you talking about in (for example) Australia? What Greek names are popular there right now if so?

@thighofrelief101 do you mean you want to register the birth of your son and call him Darren? Registering names isn't to do with the priest. You can register a name without a baptism. It's just a form you complete- usually the hospital the baby is born in has an office that does this when issuing the birth certificate. Then that goes to your local council for registration of birth. It's the baptism bit the priest can get iffy about. Translating the name Darren might be fun though if the Cypriot councils are anything like the ones in Greece.

English names don't have conjugations. Darren is Darren. In Greek you would use Andrea when talking to someone and talking about them e.g. Have you seen Andrea today? Andreas would not be used when talking to them. Just when talking about them e.g. Where is Andreas? It's to do with grammatical cases of nouns - nominative, accusative, etc. In English there are 3 cases commonly for nouns. In Greek we have 4 commonly used including the vocative case and it applies to proper nouns too. So it gets more complicated. Some info here: www.kypros.org/LearnGreek/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=61

Erm, Spiros was the 13th most popular name for a boy in 2016 in Greece. I am not sure why you think expats don’t like it. Spiridon is old fashioned but many people just go straight for Spiros.

Just coming on to say that some of the names mentioned are incredibly old fashioned, and most young Greek or Cypriot couples outside of these countries wouldn't choose them (Spiros for example!).

Aristotle/ 'arris - is rhyming slang for arse.
Not been mentioned so far, suppose it's not well known enough to have any bearing.

Calix

Just thought of another. Angelos. My brother had a Greek friend by that name.

Thanos. My son's Greek friend's name.

If you are in Cyprus and Greek and decide to call your child Darren can you register it civilly and ignore the priest? How would you conjugate it?

I understand that if you name a child Andreas you would call to him as Andrea and refer to him as Andrea but when would you use the full name in speech?

When had to go to the birth registry with a lawyer to get Harlot changed! It now says Sarlot - Charlotte.

We are English and live in Cyprus. I named my daughter an English name which is a greek word and looks similar written in both languages.

I struggled to do this with a name for DS so decided to look at English names of Greek origin, Christopher, Alexander and Philip for example. We called him Gregory because I like it's meaning.

We can't pronounce it the greek way. Dd is in Greek pre-school and can't pronounce it the English way so merges the two in her own way and calls him Gegorious.

Both my dc have more English middle names but even in Greek on their birth certificates they have strange spellings so I second anyone who says watch spelling and pronunciations with anglo-greek names!

@Booboostwo hello too. Sorry - ELOT is like a red rag to a bull right now.

@Booboostwo sadly not all priests agree with whatever the latest policy update may or may not be. It's the same with weddings etc. Just depends who you get. I have a non-Saint name (well, it's a tenuous Saint) and I was baptised in a tiny village many years ago and that was fine. Friends haven't had the same luck recently. I'm not worried about our name choice for baptism although I am sure it will still cause a stir with my more traditional aunt.

As for the ELOT-743 translations don't even get me started. It is causing me, my unborn DC and my DH all kinds of trouble right now. I don't even want to talk about it and the malakes who put it together and use it without the possibility of editing the spellings. There isn't a name I couldn't tell you the translation for on there. Not that half of them make sense. Currently trying to reverse engineer the spelling of English names so we don't end up with six different versions of the same name on six different official documents. My middle name is hilarious in my Greek passport/ID. Makes no sense at all. Bit like Charlotte/Harlot. My husband is English - his name is a disaster on there.

Hence my question to the OP about passports, ID cards etc. Be careful how you spell things and how you write them in English and in Greek if you are thinking of trying to move between the two languages on official documentation. Things are not always what they seem...

In my family we have:
Panikos
theodosis
Yiannis
Petros
Costandinos
Artemis
Savvas
Andreas
Yioti
Vassos

Hello fellow Greek PBobs
I was referring to Smiled’s second post. Andonis is fine by me. The Greek automated transliteration system, the one that was created to change Latin characters to Greek consistently through out the EU but is now used to disasterous effects by the Greek state to change Greek characters to Latin (it change my Daughter’s Charlotte to Harlot!) changes Αντώνης to Antonis. Personally I prefer Andonis but there you go.

I thought the policy of the Greek Orthodox Church was to accept all orthodox saints names as well as all Ancient Greek names. Lately they have accepted more unique names, a friend found a priest who accepted Ilia for a girl and Myros for a boy, but I think he was lucky!

Leonardo
Vassos

@Booboostwo might not have been clear from my post but I'm Greek born and raised in Greece. I get Antoniou is a surname . You replied with "Goodness SmiledWiththeRisingSun, no!" when Smiled suggested Adonis - I was confused by what you meant by it. I also spelt it as Adonis rather than the Greeklish spelling as I'm trying to work out if OP is looking for a Greek name or an Anglicised Greek name. The latter makes paperwork easier. The former is my preference - even with the nightmare paperwork I'm in right now. Not sure why I'm explaining myself to you - but the tone of your message suggested I didn't know I could speak my language. So thought I should clarify

@BillyAndTheSillies Yeah Cypriots tend to be more Anglicised - and names will likely be slightly different in certain cases. Sadly can't help with the Catholic aspect - I'm Greek Orthodox and for us it depends what your priest is like. Some still get upset if you choose a non-Christian/Saint name. Some don't care. Byron is a great name - surprised that caused a kerfuffle. Is that because it's not Biblical enough? Our DC will have an Ancient Greek name and I fully expect some raised eyebrows.

OP I like the name Orestes/Orestis too. Although I suspect in England someone says it sounds too much like testes.

Byron is a pretty cool name.
There's a village in Cyrus where all the men were named after philosophers.
How about Michaledes, OP, you can shorten it to Michael?