Anyone living in Cyprus or Greece or are Greek or Cypriot

[bruffin]

Has anyone heard of a man's name Yiakalli. I have googled it and have only come up with it as a surname.

My grandad lived in cyprus and died in 1939/40 all we know of him is that he was a farmer and lived in Voroklini. The name comes from my nan's death certificate. She died in this country so it is obviously anglicized. It says widow of Yiakalli Georghiou. I know in cyprus that the children took their father's first name as their surname, but my dad was a georghiou, so I am wondering if GD was Georghiou Yiakalli instead.

I am only aware of this as a surname, although I admit there may be some names in use in Cyprus that are not used in Greece that I may be unaware of.

Georghiou is definitely a surname. The first name would be Georgios (or Yiorgos/ Yiorgios, etc) but the point is it would not end in -iou as a first name. However, I'm thinking that the anglicised version got it slightly wrong, as the -ou form is actually the genitive case, which would make sense in saying 'widow of X'. His name might well have been Georgios Yiakallis. You might try searching for that.

Actually, I just typed 'Yiakallis' in google in the Greek alphabet and all the hits are surnames.

Thanks you so much - that does make sense. Yiakalli really didn't sound right as a christian name to me.

Just to concur with alexpolismum. MIL and her siblings, plus FIL and his all came over from Cyprus in the 50's and 60's (and have wandered back and forth ever since! ) and they've ended up with a weird and wonderful variety of surnames/first names because of different people's attempts to anglicise their names. Official paperwork in Cyprus at the time (for those in the villages at least) could also be a tad iffy - FIL had 3 different legal birth dates, MIL and her sisters ended up using different surnames because her parents were illiterate and didn't spot the various mistakes made by their proxies. Trying to sort out official paperwork for MIL is fun...

Thanks MrsD.
We got the h in Georghiou because of the translation when my dad came to uk in the 50s, apparently that was pot luck, some people became Georgiou and others Georghiou.

Efharisto to you both

Gerghiou means "of Georghios", her greek papers probably said "chira Yiakalli Gerghiou", which would mean "widow of Gerghios Yakallis", but the brits got it all mixed up in the translation (and they couldn't have known).

Also don't forget that in formal paperwork greeks and cypriots always put the surname before the forename.

HTH