Most of Sicily was a greek and Syracuse was a greek colony. In fact Archimedes helped defend it against the romans. Most of southern Italy was greek, before Rome became big(and conquered other italians, greeks and carthaginians).
And even after the romans conquered “everything”, greek culture was still dominant since the romans were greekaboos(and greek culture was everywhere because of Alexander the OK).
I love the few regions that probably translate to “those fuckers” over some beef that began in prehistory. “Wise, huh? You wise guys can suck Alydzej njutz.”
I think the Germanic influence of adding land at the end should have been a different color. It’s still based in Latin, but still a significant difference imho.
Yeah, every word is made up. Looks like this one is made up “from lonia, the ancient region (western Asia Minor) occupied by the lonian people” as it says in the graphic as well as the suffix “stan”, which you probably know from some other countries and “is Persian and Urdu for “place of” or “where one stands”” according to dictionary.com.
They were mostly athenean settlers, which is why when Persia conquered them, they asked Athens for help. Athens helped them but the ionian revolt failed and Persia was super pissed. The persian emperor had his servant reminding him daily to “remember the athenians”.
This is the main reason behind the persian invasion of mainland Greece. The persians burnt Athens to the ground, which eventually led to Alexander the OK burning Persepolis(Persian Empire’s Capital) to the ground(a couple centuries later).
Since turks came from the East, Ionians were kinda the first greeks they met, so they decided that all greeks are Ionians(Yunans). Or other non greeks in the East were already calling greeks “yunans” and turks just adopted that terminology too. Especially since that term had been mostly depreciated by the time the turks arrived to the neighbourhood.
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