Greek boy names: meanings, saints and name days

In Greece a boy's name almost always comes with a saint or a feast of the Church, and with it a day of the year that will be his name day for life. This guide looks at the traditional boys' names in this calendar: what they mean, which languages they come from, whose feast they follow and when in the year they fall. In many families the choice is settled by the custom of naming a child after a grandfather, which the guide to Greek naming traditions explains; what follows is for parents who are still choosing, or who want to know more about the name the family has chosen.

How the names are ordered

Each of the 427 names in this calendar, 243 of them boys' names, has a popularity value between 0 and 100. It is the site's own relative ordering of how common a name is in everyday life, used to sort lists and search results. It is not an official statistic and does not count births or registrations. At the top are Giorgos with 100, Giannis and Konstantinos with 95, Dimitris with 92 and Nikos with 90.

The names at the top of the list

The eleven boys' names with a value of 78 or more, with their meaning and main name day:

• [Giorgos](name:giorgos) (formally Georgios): from the ancient γεωργός, “farmer”, a compound of γῆ, “earth”, and ἔργον, “work”. Saint George, 23 April; in years when that day falls on or before Easter, the feast moves to Easter Monday.
• [Giannis](name:giannis) (Ioannis): from the Hebrew Yoḥanan, “God is gracious”. Main name day 7 January, the Synaxis of Saint John the Baptist.
• [Konstantinos](name:konstantinos): Latin, from Constans; saint.gr traces it to the verb consto, “to stand firm”. Saints Constantine and Helen, 21 May.
• [Dimitris](name:dimitris) (Dimitrios): formed from the name of the goddess Demeter, “belonging to Demeter” in saint.gr's reading. Saint Demetrius the Myrrh-streamer, 26 October.
• [Nikos](name:nikos) (Nikolaos): from νίκη, “victory”, and λαός, “people”. Saint Nicholas, 6 December.
• [Panagiotis](name:panagiotis): from Panagia, “all-holy”, the title of the Virgin Mary. The Dormition of the Theotokos, 15 August.
• [Vasilis](name:vasilis) (Vasileios): “royal”, from basileus, “king”. Saint Basil the Great, 1 January.
• [Christos](name:christos): from Χριστός, “anointed”. Behind the Name explains that the spelling Χρήστος belongs to an ancient name, Chrestos, which merged with Christos because the two came to sound alike. Christmas, 25 December.
• [Thanasis](name:thanasis) (Athanasios): “immortal”, from the negative prefix a- and θάνατος, “death”. Two name days: 18 January and 2 May, the translation of the relics of Saint Athanasius the Great.
• [Vangelis](name:vangelis) (Evangelos): from εὐάγγελος, “bringing good news”. The Annunciation, 25 March.
• [Michalis](name:michalis) (Michail): from the Hebrew Mikhaʾel, “who is like God?”. The Synaxis of the Archangels, 8 November.

Where the names come from

Using the meanings recorded on each name's page, these familiar names can be grouped by origin:

• Greek words. Many names are ordinary Greek words or are built from them: Stavros is “cross”, Petros comes from πέτρα, “rock”, Stefanos from στέφανος, “crown, wreath”, Fotis from φως, “light”, and Lefteris from the word for “free”. Thodoris is “gift of God”, while Charalampos joins χαρά, “joy”, with λάμπω, “to shine”.
• Hebrew. Giannis and Michalis, Manolis (Emmanouil, “God is with us”) and Ilias, the name of the prophet Elijah, which Behind the Name explains as “my God is Yahweh”. Thomas comes from the Aramaic for “twin”.
• Latin. Konstantinos, Antonis from the Roman family name Antonius, Pavlos from Paulus, “small”, Markos from Marcus and Marios from Marius.
• Names of ancient gods. Dimitris goes back to Demeter and Dionysis to the god Dionysos. Both became Christian names through saints: Saint Demetrius, and Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, whose feast on 3 October is the main name day of Dionysis.

Not every meaning is settled, and the name pages say so. saint.gr links Spyros (Spyridon) to σπυρίς, a woven basket, while Behind the Name also mentions the Latin spiritus, “spirit”. Behind the Name calls Antonius Etruscan and of unknown meaning, whereas saint.gr reads Antonios in Greek as “the most generous”. Behind the Name traces Markos to the god Mars, saint.gr to the Latin marceo, “to wither”; for Loukas the proposals range from “man from Lucania” to the Latin lux, “light”.

A saint, a feast of Christ or a feast of the Virgin

Most boys' names belong to a saint of the same name, and the name day is that saint's commemoration. A good number of traditional names, though, come from a feast, and then everyone with the name celebrates on that feast:

• Feasts of Christ: Christos and Manolis at Christmas; Stavros at the Exaltation of the Cross, 14 September; Sotiris at the Transfiguration, 6 August; Fotis at Theophany, 6 January; Anastasios and Lambros on Easter Sunday. See names from the feasts of Christ.
• Feasts of the Virgin Mary: Panagiotis and Marios at the Dormition, Vangelis at the Annunciation. See names from the feasts of the Virgin Mary.
• The archangels: Michalis, Angelos and Gavriil (Gabriel) on 8 November. See the feast of the Archangels.

A boy's name can even follow a woman saint: Paraskevas, the masculine of Paraskevi, celebrates with Saint Paraskevi on 26 July.

Ancient Greek names often have a saint of their own too. In this calendar Periklis celebrates on 10 April, Leonidas on 15 April, Aristotelis on 14 May and Achilleas on 15 May. Names with no saint at all are traditionally celebrated on All Saints' Sunday; see names without a saint and ancient Greek names.

When in the year he will celebrate

Because the date comes with the name, it is worth looking at the calendar before deciding. Of the 25 boys' names at the top of the list (popularity 62 or more), 12 have their main name day between early November and mid-January, from Michalis on 8 November to Thanasis on 18 January; Stelios, Andreas, Nikos, Spyros, Christos, Manolis, Stefanos, Vasilis, Giannis and Antonis all fall in between. Only five fall between June and August: Petros and Pavlos together on 29 June, Ilias on 20 July, Panagiotis on 15 August and Alexandros on 30 August.

Some dates move with Easter. Anastasios and Lambros celebrate on Easter Sunday itself, which is 2 May in 2027 and 16 April in 2028. Thodoris celebrates on the Saturday of Saint Theodore, the first Saturday of Lent, which is 20 March in 2027. Giorgos keeps 23 April unless it falls on or before Easter; in 2027, with Easter on 2 May, he celebrates on Easter Monday, 3 May. The guides to movable name days and to Saint George's day after Easter explain the rules.

Other names have two dates: Thanasis (18 January and 2 May), Fotis (6 January and 6 February), Manolis (25 and 26 December) and Anastasios (Easter and 22 January, with Saint Anastasius the Persian). How families choose between them is covered in names with more than one name day.

The everyday form and the formal form

Many boys' names exist in two forms: a formal one, the older, learned form used on official documents, and an everyday one. So there are Georgios and Giorgos, Ioannis and Giannis, Dimitrios and Dimitris, Spyridon and Spyros, Emmanouil and Manolis. Other names, such as Konstantinos and Panagiotis, have no separate formal form but several pet forms: Kostas, Kostis and Dinos; Panos and Takis. Whichever form a boy goes by, the name day is the same. The guide to nicknames and formal names sets out the patterns, and the nicknames, such as Takis, that belong to more than one name.

Boys' names and their feminine forms

Most traditional boys' names have a feminine form that shares their day: Georgia with Giorgos, Vasiliki with Vasilis, Konstantina with Konstantinos, Ioanna with Giannis and Stavroula with Stavros. Konstantinos, for his part, celebrates on 21 May with every Eleni. The feminine names, including those with a saint of their own, are in the guide to Greek girl names.

Before you decide

• Open the name's page for its meaning and sources, its saint or feast, its forms and spellings, and every date.
• Check whether the date is fixed or depends on Easter, and whether a second date might suit the family better.
• From the same page, save the name's dates for the next ten years to your calendar as an .ics file.