Because Kythera was settled in such a way that a few dozen original families spawned the majority of present-day Kytherians, almost every branch of every family had a "nickname" to distinguish it from that of others with the same surname.
The nicknames were sometimes simply the genitive form of a christian name (e.g. "Dimitrelou") or derived from the profession of an ancestor (e.g. "Miliotis" = "Miller") or even describe a physical attribute (e.g. "Koutsaftis" or "Tarzan").
This is the section of the website where you can view the island's nicknames and read about which surnames they are associated with and hopefully where they came from as well.
You can submit to the section by clicking on add to nicknames at the top right.
One of my uncles told me that one of the reasons we have the "trelos" nickname was because there is a "disease" in the family which turns siblings against each other once the parents have died (sounds like a world-wide t...
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From, Catching the Dying Light of Kythera, The Monthly Chronicle, Sydney, Vol 2, No 3, May/June, 1996. pp, 22-23 MICHAEL GEORGE SMITH talks to photographer JAMES PRINEAS about his 1996 exhibition of photographs at the Bo...
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