Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!

I adore big cities! You can keep getting surprised by them, explore and discover new things and London is one of my favourite ones! Ancient Greeks didn’t have the sense of a capital city the way we have it today. They did however have city-states that had colonised others and therefore influenced socially, financially, politically and culturally more than their own population. Those city-states where called Mother-Cities . In English the combined word came from Latin and French and meant the one that belongs to a Mother-City referring primarily to bishops. Of course as time went by, the meaning widened and turned into 'Capital' or 'very important city'. Μήτηρ (mitir) in Ancient Greek and Μητέρα (mitera) in modern means ‘mother’ and πόλις (polis) means 'city' . ΜΗΤΡΟΠΟΛΙΣ/METROPOLIS

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Hello everybody and welcome to season 9! I hope you had a great summer and you’re ready to start another year with me! I’ve decided to make a small/big change. I never had ads in this podcast until earlier this year when I started my partnership with Audible (click on their link in the description and have a free audiobook and a free trial on us!) but, since we’re small ourselves I thought why not make some room here to help promote small businesses that don’t necessarily have the means to push themselves like big companies do. So if you or your company is related to languages, literature, education, entertainment, Greek related products and services, games, mythology and general fun stuff (which I suspect if you’re listening to this you have the same sense of fun as me) or if you know of anyone who will find this useful, email me at yourgreeksunday@gmail.com and let’s connect! .

Welcome to season 9!

Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!

The division of time within a year wasn’t always as neat and tidy as we know it today. The Gregorian calendar that we follow didn’t come about until 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII (13th) . So what was happening before ? A little bit of a mess. In Ancient Greece, every city-state had its own calendar and they adjusted their count based on the positions of the Sun and the Moon. The rest of the world had their own type of calendars. I cannot imagine how confused the Phoenicians, who travelled so much, must have been. Anyway. Then, the Romans came and tried to organise everything but based on their military and religious activities so, their year had only 10 months starting in March (yay! let’s kick off the year with a celebration of the god of War, Mars- and start conquering the world) , April (aperio meaning to open, to bloom like nature does) , May (for the earth goddess Maia and her festivals), June (from the goddess Juno the protector of marriage and the well being of women), July (in honour of Julius Cesar who also started making a little bit more sense by creating the Julian calendar paving the way for the order we have today), August was in honour of the first Roman emperor Augustus Cesar) and the next 4 months follow the combination of Latin numbers septem, octo, novem and Decem . And that’s where it ended. At 10 . January and February didn’t have a name. It was a time for peace and reflection between conquering and since it was too cold to March anywhere why name them, right? When the time to do so came however , Janus, the double faced god looking both in the past and the future became January and Februalia, the festival of purification and atonement gave its name to February. The adjustment of the Julian calendar didn’t happen overnight . It took many trials and a lot of errors. How many days in a month? What to do with the spare ones? How are we celebrating the festivals without misplacing them? Yes, it took time and now, we have a tidy system with a few holidays that move around for convenience, a month who is -or isn’t- a full one depending on the year but a 12 month year to suit all.

In the old calendar, the Latin name for the 8th month of the year comes from the Greek οκτώ (octo) meaning 8 and -b

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Hello and welcome to Your Greek Word on a Sunday summer edition. I just returned from my Greek holidays and the place I’ve been has a great myth behind it so I’m here to tell you all about it!

If you like this episode, don't forget to comment, review and rate it and most importantly, share it with your friends.

Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!

Son of Tantalus and father of Atreus (among his numerous children), Pelops was a cunning man but had a tragic and triumphant history too. When he was a child his father cut him into pieces and served him as dinner to the gods to challenge their mental acuity. From all the gods only Demeter had a small piece from his shoulder as she was in deep grief from the loss of her daughter Persephone and didn’t realise what she was eating. The Gods ordered for the pieces of the child to be put in a cauldron and be reassembled by one of the fates . The missing piece from his shoulder was replaced by ivory and Pelops’s descendants would carry a white birthmark on their shoulders from then on.

Pelops survived and ‘thrived’!

As a young man, he fell for Hippodamia , daughter of king Oenomaus. A prophesy that the king would be killed by his son in law had him put on chariot races between himself and his daughter’s suitors killing everyone who lost and put their heads on a spike outside his palace. Pelops got into the race but not before sabotaging the king’s chariot , getting him killed, marrying his daughter and becoming king of the peninsula South of Athens that included Sparta and its famous army. He held a war against the Athenians for 27 years and won. Abolishing Democracy and establishing Oligarchy . A period that changed ancient Greece forever. If there’s one good thing Pelops did-even if it was out of fear and guilt for the murder of his father in law- was creating the Olympic Games, in Olympia. Chariot races where the first game.

But Pelops’s lineage was cursed, sons killing each other, his wife committing suicide, one of his sons went and created an empire of tragedy and left us with great myths in Greek drama. From Helen of Troy to the Oresteia. His death is a mystery but his bones said to have been summoned by Agamemnon (his descendant) when he was in Troy , to help him win the war. The bones were lost at sea, recovered years later and laid to rest in the place he called home. Νήσος (nisos) in Ancient Greek meant 'island' and the peninsula he reigned is a combined word meaning 'Pelops’s island'. Πελοπόνησσος/Peloponnesus

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Hello and welcome to the last episode for this season. Thank you for staying with me for another year, downloading and sharing the podcast! Our audience is getting bigger and this is all thanks to you! Stay tuned this summer as you might find a bonus episode or two coming your way during our break and if you haven’t yet leave a review on the platform of your choice. It does help other people find us and I always love reading what you have to say. If you're on this side of the globe have a fantastic summer and if you're on the other one, have a great autumn

Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!

Today’s episode is thanks to our listener Dale Choate , American expat in London, creative director extraordinaire and of course Gregophile . Thanks Dale.

Πειρείν is the Ancient Greek infinitive of ‘I try/I attempt ‘ and Πειρατής (Peiratis) is the one attempting . it’s directly linked to an attack and in particular at sea. The practice goes a long way back and has been documented as an acceptable one in the Mediterranean sea, between countries. it was perfectly legal to attack and steal goods and ships from another nation. It was illegal to attack your own. Until the Romans made it illegal all around (and I suspect it was because they didn’t have great nautical skills) The stories of tactics, thief leaders and, trade offs in the ancient world are fascinating and in the Mediterranean in particular because of the proximity of countries, seafaring and, trade. Although the word originated in Greece -not because that’s where it began but because the meaning was so accurate- it has been used in many languages. Piraat in Dutch, Pirat in German, Pirata in Spanish, Italian and Latin and Pirat in French where it arrived from in English, in the 14th century. ΠΕΙΡΑΤΗΣ/PIRATE

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Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!

Στάδιο (stadio) in Ancient Greece was the most popular game in the Olympics and the very first one. From 776 to 724BC that 200 yard race, was the Olympics! But it remained as the most important one even when other games where added and the winner’s name would be given to the entire event for the next 4 years .The runners would compete naked and they were supervisors both in the beginning and the end of the race to make sure everything was done properly. If there was a tie the race would be repeated until a clear winner was declared. The name of the game became both a measurement for distance and the name of the place the race was happening. The measurement arrived in English with the first Bibles around 1300 and was translated as 'furlong' and in 1834 ‘a large open oval structure with tiers of seats for viewing sporting events’ was a ΣΤΑΔΙΟ/STADIUM

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Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!

When Homer described the colour of the sea as 'wine-dark' in both the Odyssey and the Iliad, I'm sure he didn't anticipate the avalanche of misconceptions that would follow what-probably- was a moment of lyrical inspiration for the Greek Bard. And if you're wondering how can such a description cause linguistic mayhem , I urge you to ask the world wide web the following question: Did ancient Greeks have a word for the colour blue? And further more: were the ancient Greeks able to see the colour blue? Because no misconception is complete unless it's followed by a conspiracy theory nowadays. To save you the trouble the answers are 'yes' and 'yes' .What they didn't have, was the same vocabulary or colour palette as us. What we call today a shade of a colour to the ancient Greeks was the colour itself. So, as a modern example, burgundy would not be a shade of red but a colour of its own. Blue was not in the picture because there was turquoise, like the stone and the word for the lighter shade , that arrived in English through Latin and French in 1879, was first used by innovator, photographer and printer Edward Steichen, to describe a colour in his print of the solar spectrum. The Greeks used it in several combined words to define the exact shade but the colour of the sky, on a great, Greek, sunny day was ΚΥΑΝΟ/CYAN

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Hello and happy July everyone! The results of the prize draw are in and our winner is...Melanie Bittner from Germany! Congratulations Melanie, you will be receiving your gift very soon! Thank you for submitting your favourite episode which is from 2022 (now that's a loyal listener!). Let's pretend for a moment we're an old fashion radio station-I'm gonna lower my voice-and this, is a request from Melanie. Here, is her favourite episode

Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!

Συριγξ (Syrinx) in Ancient Greek was the name of an Arcadian Nymph. When the god Pan was young, he fell in love with her and chased her to the shores of the river Λάδων (Ladon). She clearly wasn't interested because she hid among the canes by the shore. Pan never found her but he made his musical instrument, known as pan-pipe from those canes and he named it, in Greek, after her. Later on, anything with the shape of a hollow cylinder would be named after her. From long tunnels to injection instruments, her name would reach medieval Latin as Syrinx , before landing in England. Συριγξ/Syringe

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Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!

This is a word that has changed very little and has a very interesting story. Στίζειν (stizin) is an ancient Greek infinitive meaning 'to mark'. The verb is Στιγματίζω (stigmatizo). Although in many countries being tattooed is considered an honourable action, the Ancient Greeks used it as a mark of disgrace. And they learned that from the Persians. In one of the battles between Greece and Persia, some Greeks joined the other side. When that battle was lost and Greeks surrendered, the Persians thought the traitors might double cross them in the future so, they marked their foreheads with the Persian royal emblem. We have several mentions from the historian Herodotus of Athenians, marking their enemies' foreheads with the Athenian symbol, the owl. Greeks also used a very painful method way to remove tattoos. It took 20 days and involved a cloth to tie around the head, a needle to pierce the tattoo, salt to dry it and either, gypsum and sodium carbonate or pepper dust and honey. Tattoos seemed to be almost exclusively on foreheads and marked criminals and slaves too. The word came to English in the late 1500s in the writings of courtier and author Sir John Harington and he used the Latinised spelling of the Ancient Greek noun ΣΤΙΓΜΑ/STIGMA

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