Greek Personal Names and the Question of Personal Identification in the Late Ottoman Empire: A Social Historical Approach

Abstract

The Ottoman state, Greek communal authorities and Greek individuals used various forms and renditions of Greek personal names across imperial and communal spaces, sometimes simultaneously. Based on how these names were written in Ottoman and Greek documentation, this article focuses on the implications of the variations in personal names to explore Greek personal identification in the late Ottoman Empire. Concentrating on Istanbul and its environs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the article is concerned with one of the results of increasing literacy and formal education, the growing dominance of modern bureaucracies and efforts for national linguistic formalization. It examines the Ottoman usage of colloquial Greek, practices of linguistic standardization by Greek administrative/literate circles and the intersection of the two practices. The article demonstrates how variations in personal names reflected and also contributed to the shaping of a multiplicity of forms of personal identification for Ottoman Greeks.