Ancient Greek Is Actually Applicable To My Life

Well, maybe.

Greek 101 is always a bit of an adventure. It's a bit overwhelming at times – new alphabet, new language, new rules that come with new alphabet and new language – and sometimes it's just kind of crazy. Plus there's lots of vocab to remember, and I have to know all the accents and different forms and the gender of the words. Crazy.

Studying Greek vocab can actually be pretty interesting, though – like with studying Latin vocab, there are a lot of English words that come from the Greek. The more obvious ones are helpful (like δημοκρατίᾱ, δημοκρατίᾱς, ἡ – or demokratia, demokratias to use a more familiar alphabet. It means democracy). The less obvious ones expand my English vocabulary (to go with a Latin example, melior, melius means better. We get the English word ameliorate from it).

And then there are the ones that jump out because they're just awesome little discoveries. In this case, I was reading my vocab aloud and I came across εἰρήνη, εἰρήνης, ἡ – eirene, eirenes to roughly transliterate it. Spoken, it sounds kind of like erin-ay, and it means peace.

I did a little research online and found that most sites that have the etymology of the name Erin attribute it to the Irish (its possible meanings are peacemaker and Ireland). I also discovered a bit about Erin/Éire/Ériu, a goddess from Irish mythology – legend has it she and her sisters Fodla and Banba represented love, peace, and hope or joy. Éire was believed to be the goddess of peace as well as the patron goddess of Ireland. As I learned in class, the name Irene for sure comes from the Greek word.

I don't know if the Irish word actually comes from the Greek, but they sound alike and have the same meaning, and that's good enough for me.