Name of Greece

The name of Greece differs in Greece in comparison with the names used for the country in other languages and cultures, just like the names of the Greeks. The ancient name of the country is Hellas or Ellada (Greek: Ελλάς, Ελλάδα; in polytonic: Ἑλλάς, Ἑλλάδα) and its official name is the Hellenic Republic. In English, however, the country is usually called Greece, which comes from Latin Graecia (as used by the Romans) and literally means 'the land of the Greeks'.

The English name and the similar adaptations in other languages derive from the Latin name (Greek: Γραικία), literally meaning 'the land of the Greeks', which was used by the Romans to denote the area of modern-day Greece. Similarly, the Latin name of the nation was Graeci, from which the English name originates. These names in turn trace their origin from , the Latin adaptation of the Greek name (pl. Γραικοί), which means 'Greek' but its etymology remains uncertain. It is unclear why the Romans called the country Graecia and its people Graeci, while the Greeks called their land Hellas and themselves Hellenes, and several speculations have been made. William Smith notes in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography that foreigners frequently refer to people by a different name (an exonym) from their native one (endonym).

Aristotle was the first to use the name Graeci (Γραικοί) in Meteorology, saying that the area about Dodona and Achelous was inhabited by the Selli and a people formerly called Graeci, but at his time Hellenes. From this statement of Aristotle it is asserted that the name of Graeci was at one period widely spread in Epirus and the western coast of Greece in general, hence it became the one by which the Hellenes were known to the Italic peoples on the opposite side of the Ionian Sea. According to Hesiod, in his work Catalogue of Women, Graecus was the son of Pandora and Zeus; he gave his name to the people who followed the Hellenic customs, while his brother Latinus gave his name to the Latins; similarly the eponymous Hellen is supposed to have given his name to the Greeks/Hellenes. In Ethnica, Stephanus of Byzantium also states that from Graecus, the son of Thessalus, the Hellenes derived the name of Graeci.

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