Theoretically, this would be Greek around 500 bc. But I’m not that picky. How would you say somewone comes from a specific place in Greek? If I’m talking about a man from Samos or Athens, how do I denote that? What would a Greejk speaker say?
If I remember correctly, there is usually a corresponding adjective / noun (Athenian, Corinthian, Ionian, etc). The adjective would get a different ending depending on the case, number, and gender of the thing it describes. Otherwise I think you could just use a preposition and say from wherever. I’ll have to look it up once I get back to work to be 100% certain though.
Ἀθηναῖος - From Athens, Athenian
Κορίνθιος - Corinthian
Also,
Ἀθῆναι - Athens
Κόρινθος - Corinth
So, you might be able to surmise a pattern from that if it’s a place that they wouldn’t have had a word for.
There are a few ways to denote where someone comes from, depending on the place name.
From Athens: Athineos, pronounced Ah-thi-neh-os
From Samos: Samiotis
I think the most common way is to add -eos to the end of the word for men (like in the case of Athens above) and add -ea for women.
It wouldn’t be pronounced as
“(h)a-theh-NAI-os” ?
The main reasons I say that are that:
The aspiration comes before the alpha. Also, ancient attic pronunciation of eta is like the ‘e’ of “bet” (but held longer) or like the ‘e’ of eta / obey (depending on whether it’s accented), and the ai forms a dipthong like “aisle”. Eta usually got transliterated into Latin as either a regular e (bet) or a long e (obey) depending on whether or not it were accented. This is the case with Σωκράτης ------> SOcratEs (imagine the O and E have macrons over them, I don’t know how to do it on this website), which would be pronounced as “so-cra-tays”. I thought the main instances when eta became an ‘a’ were when words ending with eta in Ancient Greek became words of the first declension in Latin, which ends in ‘a’.
I think yours is the biblical pronunciation.
Cites:
http://biblicalgreek.org/links/pronunciation.php
Sorry, didn’t mean to nitpick / hijack… Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. Yeah, I would agree that adding an iota to the stem, moving the accent forward, and adding various endings / articles (masculine plural for the people as a noun) would seem to work. I just wasn’t ready to say that as a hard and fast rule because I wasn’t sure about words like delphic, doric, creten, etc.
This is pretty handy if you don’t have a hard copy in front of you:
This doesn’t seem right. Why should there be an “i” in “Athineos”, rather of an “e”? Like YourAdHere said, “Athenaios” is correct.
“Samiotis” doesn’t look right, either. Masculine nouns and adjectives ending in iota sigma are extremely rare. “Samotes” would be better; however, “Samios” is correct.
So, we have until now:
from Corinth (Korinthos): Korinthios
from Samos: Samios
from Athens (Athenai): Athenaios
The same pattern also goes for:
from Rhodes (Rhodos): Rhodios
from Thebes (Thebai): Thebaios
from Olympia: Olympios
from Argos: Argeios
All of the above are stressed on the syllable that precedes “-ios”.
But there are some freak exceptions:
from Crete (Krete): Kres
from Sparta (Sparte): Spartiates (likewise: Epirus (Epeiros) -> Epeirotes)
from Macedonia (Makedonia): Makedon (stressed on the last syllable)
from Aegina (Aigina): Aiginetes (likewise: Stageira -> Stageiretes)
from Troy (Troia): Troas
from Byzantium (Byzantion): Byzantinos
from Eleusis: Eleusinios (interjecting an “n”, rather than going for the more straightforward “Eleusios”)
from Aetolia (Aitolia): Aitolos (bypassing the “i”, and stressing the final syllable)