Greeks ...... From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Greeks

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the Greek people. For the finance term, see Greeks (finance).

Greeks
Έλληνες

Ioannis Kapodistrias • Pericles • El Greco • Alexander the Great • Eleftherios Venizelos
Total population
approx. 14,000,000–16,000,000 [1]
Regions with significant populations
Greece 10,166,929 (2001 census) [2] United States 1,350,600a (2008 est.) [3] Cyprus 635,914 (2001 census) [4] Australia 365,120b (2006 census) [5] United Kingdom 400,000 (estimate) [6] Germany 294,891 (2007 est.) [7] Canada 242,685c (2006 census) [8] France 210,000 (2009 est.) [9] Albania 200,000 [10] Russia 97,827 (2002) [11] Chile 90,000–120,000 [12] Ukraine 91,500 (2001 census) [13] South Africa 55,000 (2008 estimate) [14] Brazil 50,000d [15] Italy 30,000 (2008 estimate) [16] Argentina 30,000 (2008 estimate) [17] Belgium 15,742 (2007) [18] Sweden 12,000–15,000 [19] Kazakhstan 13,000 (est) [20] Switzerland 11,000 estimated [21] Uzbekistan 9,500 estimate [22] Romania 6,500 2002 census [23] Turkey 2,500 [24] Elsewhere see Greek diaspora
Languages
Greek
Religion
Greek Orthodox
Footnotes
a An estimated 3,000,000 claim Greek descent.[25] b Only includes people of 1st and 2nd generation "Greek" background. Estimates of total "Greek" population in Australia ranges from 700,000 - 800,000.[26] c Those whose stated ethnic origins included "Greek" among others. The number of those whose stated ethnic origin is solely "Greek" is 145,250. An additional 3,395 Cypriots of undeclared ethnicity live in Canada. d "Including descendants".

The Greeks (Greek: Έλληνες, IPA: [ˈe̞line̞s]), also known as Hellenes, are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighbouring regions, who can also be found in diaspora communities around the world.^[27]

Greek colonies and communities have been historically established in most corners of the Mediterranean but Greeks have always been centred around the Aegean Sea, where the Greek language has been spoken since antiquity.^[28] Until the early 20th century, Greeks were uniformly distributed between the Greek peninsula, the western coast of Asia Minor, Pontus, Egypt, Cyprus andConstantinople; many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and the Eastern Mediterranean areas of the ancient Greek colonization.^[29]

In the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), a large-scale population exchange between Greece and Turkey transferred and confined ethnic Greeks almost entirely into the borders of the modern Greek state and Cyprus. Other ethnic Greek populations can be found from Southern Italy to the Caucasus and in diaspora communities in a number of other countries. Today, the vast majority of Greeks are at least nominally adherents of Greek Orthodoxy.^[30]

Contents [hide] 1 History 1.1 Origins 1.2 Mycenaean 1.3 Classical 1.4 Hellenistic 1.5 Byzantine 1.6 Ottoman 1.7 Modern 2 Identity 2.1 Names 2.2 Modern and ancient 2.3 Demographics 2.4 Diaspora 2.4.1 Ancient 2.4.2 Modern 3 Culture 3.1 Language 3.2 Religion 3.3 Art 3.4 Science 3.5 Symbols 3.6 Surnames 3.7 Sea 4 Timeline 5 See also 6 Notes 7 Citations 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links