Category talk:Ethnic Greeks

This is the discussion page for Category:Ethnic Greeks. Here, you may discuss improving the article. To discuss the subject itself, use the Forums.
Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~). Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.	Be polite Assume good faith Do not insult other people

Hellenes

Proposal to change name from Ethnic Greeks to Hellenes to distinguish better from Greek nationality. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 16:03, June 23, 2018 (UTC)

This is an interesting proposal. I see that Wikipedia also notes that ethnic Greeks are alternatively known as "Hellenes", but I'm not sure if Hellenes can't also be applied to national Greeks. If not, then I would support this move. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 18:22, June 23, 2018 (UTC)

It technically could as another name for Greece is the Hellenic Republic or Hellas. I proposed Hellenes as its etymological roots predate Greek national identity. It refers back to the mythological father of the Greek people Hellen whose descendants founded the four main Greek tribes, Dorian, Ionian, Acheans, Aeolian. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 18:37, June 23, 2018 (UTC)

I would be on board with this if we can get another user's support about it. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 00:39, June 25, 2018 (UTC)

Move to "Egyptian Greeks"

When we first created this category, it was owing to the need to categorize the ethnic Greek population of Egypt in Assassin's Creed: Origins. To simply categorize them as "Greeks", which we have been using in the national sense, would have been confusing. On the other hand, merging them into "Egyptians" would also been confusing because of the significant role that Greek vs. Egyptian ethnicity played in Ptolemaic society. While doing the category overhaul, I've found that the "Ethnic Greeks" and "Ethnic Egyptians" categories really do stick out awkwardly against all the other categories, even though we do have separate categories for "Han Chinese" and "Chinese" (the nationality) and "Mongols" and "Mongolians". I've come to believe that it was a poor solution on my part to create the "Ethnic Greeks" and "Ethnic Egyptian" categories. Instead, I have a new suggestion: all Greeks of the Ptolemaic Kingdom should be moved to the new category "Egyptian Greeks". I feel really silly for not having thought of it before given how common terms like "Chinese American" or "Malaysian Chinese" are. On that note, English is annoyingly not consistent on whether the ethnic background or the nationality comes first in the name... Chinese Americans are ethnic Chinese who are American citizens, but ethnic Chinese who are Malaysian citizens are called Malaysian Chinese instead of Chinese Malaysian for some reason. It's confusing! So between Greek Egyptian or Egyptian Greek, I think term used over at Wikipedia would be the conventionally correct one since they use the common term policy. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 04:27, 31 May 2023 (UTC) Forgot to add that this category also contains Greeks from Odyssey and those should be sorted out as well. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 04:37, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

This makes sense to me. Would Egyptian Greeks be a subcategory of other ethnicity and nationality categories? Lacrossedeamon (talk) 05:00, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm glad you brought that up because I was also wondering if we should have categories like "Tang subjects", "Ottoman subjects", etc. and make them as subcategories of nationality categories instead. It's getting to the point where that clarity may be needed since terms like "Chinese" or "British people" can be vague. But then "Ottoman subjects" may be the same thing as "Ottomans?" Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 18:31, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm going to start moving pages out of this category now. I have learned that ancient Greeks thought of themselves as belonging to ethnicities like Dorians, Ionians, Locrians, Boeotians, etc. that were broader than their national affiliation to a polis while Hellenes would've been like a pan-ethnic identity to them. I might create categories for those ancient ethnic groups (now long since merged together under a Greek ethnic identity), but it might be wrong to assume the ethnic identity of Odyssey characters narrower than Greek just by where Kassandra meets them. In line with how we have cleaned up the category for Chinese people, using Chinese as a parent category, I will be using Greeks as a parent category meaning characters already classified as Athenian or Spartan for example will not have to be placed directly in the Greek category. I will also be moving this category to "Egyptian Greeks" (unfortunately manually...), to be used for ethnic Greeks in Egypt specifically. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 17:04, 23 November 2023 (UTC)