Back يونانيون بنطيون Arabic Pont yunanları Azerbaijani Понтийски гърци Bulgarian Grecs pòntics Catalan Pontští Řekové Czech Pontosgriechen German Πόντιοι Greek Grekoj de la Ponto Esperanto Griegos pónticos Spanish Pontoko greziar Basque
Έλληνες του Πόντου (Ρωμιοί) Karadeniz Rumları | |
|---|---|
 One of the Pontic flags | |
| Total population | |
| c. 2,000,000[1] – 2,500,000[2] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Greece | 368,000–500,000[3][4] |
 Georgia | 100,000[5] |
 Ukraine | 75,000+[6] |
 Russia | 50,000+[7] |
 Kazakhstan | 10,000–12,000[8] |
 Uzbekistan | 10,000[9] [10] |
 Armenia | 9,000[11] |
 Turkey | 5,000–5,100[12][13] |
| Languages | |
| Predominantly Modern and Pontic Greek. Also the languages of their respective countries of residence (Those include Armenian, Georgian, Russian, Turkish and Urum language) | |
| Religion | |
| Greek Orthodox Christianity, Russian Orthodox Christianity, Sunni Islam (mostly in Turkey), other Christian denominations | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Cappadocians, Caucasian Greeks, Urums | |
| Part of a series on |
| Pontic Greeks |
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| Pontic culture |
| Languages and dialects |
| History |
| Religion |
| Related ethnic groups |
| Persecution |
The Pontic Greeks (Pontic: Ρωμαίοι, Ρωμιοί;[a] Turkish: Pontus Rumları or Karadeniz Rumları; Greek: Πόντιοι, Ελληνοπόντιοι[b][c]), also Pontian Greeks or simply Pontians, are an ethnically Greek[18][19] group indigenous to the region of Pontus, in northeastern Anatolia (modern-day Turkey). They share a common Pontic Greek culture that is distinguished by its music, dances, cuisine, and clothing. Folk dances, such as the Serra (also known as Pyrrhichios), and traditional musical instruments, like the Pontic lyra, remain important to Pontian diaspora communities. Pontians traditionally speak Pontic Greek, a modern Greek variety, that has developed remotely in the region of Pontus. Commonly known as Pontiaka, it is traditionally called Romeika by its native speakers.
The earliest Greek colonies in the region of Pontus begin in 700 BC, including Sinope, Trapezus, and Amisos. Greek colonies continued to expand on the coast of the Black Sea (Euxeinos Pontos) between the Archaic and Classical periods. The Hellenistic Kingdom of Pontus was annexed by Rome in 63 BC becoming Roman and later Byzantine territory. During the 11th century AD, Pontus was largely isolated from the rest of the Greek–speaking world, following the Seljuk conquest of Anatolia. After the 1203 siege of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade, the Empire of Trebizond was established on the Black Sea coast by a branch of the Komnenos dynasty, later known as 'Grand Komnenos'. Anatolia, including Trebizond, was eventually conquered by the Ottomans entirely by the 15th century AD. Greek presence in Pontus remained vibrant during the early modern period up until the 20th century, when, following the Pontic Greek genocide and the 1923 population exchange with Turkey, Pontic Greeks migrated primarily to Greece and around the Caucasus, including in the country of Georgia.[20]
Today, most Pontic Greeks live in Northern Greece, especially in and around Thessaloniki in Macedonia. Those from southern Russia, Ukraine, and Crimea are often referred to as "Northern Pontic [Greeks]", in contrast to those from "South Pontus", which strictly speaking is Pontus proper. Those from Georgia, northeastern Anatolia, and the former Russian Caucasus are in contemporary Greek academic circles often referred to as "Eastern Pontic [Greeks]" or Caucasian Greeks. The Turkic-speaking Greek Orthodox Urums are included in this latter groups as well. Aside from their predominantly Greek origin, they also likely owe a degree of their ancestry to several sources.[21][22]
- ^ Dufoix, Stephane (2008). Diasporas. University of California Press. p. 40. ISBN 9780520941298.
For example, there are 2 million Pontic Greeks worldwide, mostly in Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Germany, and Sweden.
- ^ Phrankoulē-Argyrē, Ioustinē (2006). Spyridon, Archbishop of America, 1996 – 1999: the heritage. Hellēnika Grammata. p. 175.
Οι ξεριζωμένοι και διασκορπισμένοι στα πέρατα της οικουμένης έλληνες του Πόντου συμποσούνται σήμερα γύρω στα 2.500.000.
- ^ "The revival of a second Greek language".
- ^ "Pontic Greek in Greece".
- ^ Danver, Steven L. (2015). Native Peoples of the World: An Encyclopedia of Groups, Cultures and Contemporary Issues. Routledge. p. 316. ISBN 9781317464006.
In Georgia, the Greek community (approximately 100,000) has maintained its native language…
- ^ "Всеукраїнський перепис населення 2001 | English version | Results".
- ^ Figure includes all Greeks in Russia: https://rosstat.gov.ru/storage/mediabank/Tom5_tab1_VPN-2020.xlsx
- ^ "Bilateral Relations Between Greece and Kazakhstan". Archived from the original on 21 November 2007.
- ^ The Ethnic Minorities of Armenia, Garnik Asatryan, Victoria Arakelova.
- ^ https://web.archive.org/web/20091007180449/http://www.library.cjes.ru/files/pdf/ethno-atlas-uzb.pdf [bare URL PDF]
- ^ The Ethnic Minorities of Armenia, Garnik Asatryan, Victoria Arakelova.
- ^ "Against all odds: Archaic Greek in a modern world | University of Cambridge". July 2010.
- ^ "Pontic Greek in Greece".
- ^ Fann, Patricia (1991). "The Pontic Myth of Homeland: Cultural Expressions of Nationalism and Ethnicism in Pontos and Greece, 1870-1990". Journal of Refugee Studies. 4 (4): 346. doi:10.1093/jrs/4.4.340.
- ^ Georgije Ostrogorski (1969). "The Early Byzantine State". History of the Byzantine State. Rutgers University Press. p. 28. ISBN 9780813511986.
- ^ Ascherson, Neal (1995). Black Sea. MacMillan. p. 181. ISBN 9780809015931.
- ^ Popov, Anton (2003). "Becoming Pontic: "Post-Socialist" Identities, "Transnational" Geography, and the "Native" Land of the Caucasian Greeks". Ab Imperio. 2003 (2): 339–360. doi:10.1353/imp.2003.0114. S2CID 131320546.
- ^ Alan John Day; Roger East; Richard Thomas (2002). A Political and Economic Dictionary of Eastern Europe. Psychology Press. p. 454. ISBN 1857430638.
Pontic Greeks An ethnic Greek minority found in Georgia and originally concentrated in the breakaway republic of Abkhazia. The Pontic Greeks are ultimately descended from Greek colonists of the Caucasus region (who named the Black Sea the Pontic Sea)
- ^ Totten, Samuel; Bartrop, Paul Robert; Jacobs, Steven L. (2008). Dictionary of Genocide: A-L. ABC-CLIO. p. 337. ISBN 978-0313346422.
Pontic Greeks, Genocide of. The Pontic (sometimes Pontian) Greek genocide is the term applied to the massacres and deportations perpetuated against ethnic Greeks living in the Ottoman Empire at the hands of the Young Turk government between 1914 and 1923. The name of this people derives from the Greek word Pontus, meaning "sea coast," and refers to the Greek population that lived on the south-eastern coast of the Black Sea, that is, in northern Turkey, for three millennia.
- ^ Wood, Michael (2005). In Search of Myths & Heroes: Exploring Four Epic Legends of the World. University of California Press. p. 109. ISBN 0520247248.
THE PONTIC GREEKS In the valleys running down to the Black Sea shore around Trebizond, the Greek presence lasted from 700 BC until our own time. Only after the catastrophe of 1922, when the Greeks were expelled from Turkey, did most of them migrate to Greece, or into Georgia where many had started to go before the First World War when the first signs of burning were in the air. The Turks had entered central Anatolia (the Greek word for 'the east') in the eleventh century, and by 1400 it was entirely in their hands, though the jewel in the crown, Constantinople itself, wasn't taken till 1453. By then the Greek-speaking Christian population was in a minority, and even their church services were conducted partly in Greek, partly in Turkish. In Pontus, on the Black Sea coast, it was a different story. Here the Greeks were a very strong presence right up into modern times. Although they had been conquered in 1486, they were still the majority in the seventeenth century and many converted to Islam still spoke Greek. Even in the late twentieth century the authorities in Trebizond had to use interpreters to work with the Muslim Pontic-Greek speakers in the law courts, as the language was still spoken as their mother tongue. This region had a thriving oral culture into the last century and a whole genre of ballads comes down from the Ancient Greeks ...
- ^ Topalidis, Sam (March 2019). "An Introduction to Pontic Greek History". Australian Pontian Association 2019 Synapantema: 1.
Today, Pontic Greeks are most probably descendants of these Greek colonists, indigenous Anatolians, Greeks who had moved relatively recently to Pontos, or other people who migrated to Pontos and converted to Christianity.
- ^ "Rediscovering Romeyka". Romeyka Project.
It is not clear how many of them [Romeika speakers] were assimilated native Caucasians or Turks entering Pontus together with the Ottomans from 1460 onwards, who adopted Greek.
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