Dictionary

One of the hardest aspects of Greek genealogy is reading and translating the old Greek records. It’s not only the illegible handwriting of past centuries and the use of the “katharevousa” (a compromise between ancient Greek and the modern vernacular form of the Greek language),  but also the use of many words which are hard to translate or are not in use any more. These words can be either special administrational terms, or of ancient Greek, or even Turkish, origin.

Based on Greek Ancestry’s research experience, this dictionary was created to help English-speaking researchers translate and understand basic lines of an old Greek document. To form this dictionary we used a wide variety of 19^th century documents (such as municipal registers, school & church records, voter lists etc.) from all around Greece. This way, we managed to create a wide database, which, expanding geographically and socially, wishes to cover the most crucial translational needs of a Greek genealogist.

This dictionary consists of two parts. The first part includes six introductory tables to familiarize the reader with the letters of the Greek alphabet, the Greek numbers and units of time. The second and main part includes three more tables, with: 1) basic vocabulary found in all types of records, 2) words seen in school records (a type of record that includes special vocabulary), and 3) a list of the most common professions and occupations found in Greek records.