Έλληνες του Πόντου (Ρωμιοί) Karadeniz Rumları | |
---|---|
Total population | |
c. 2,000,000[1] – 2,500,000[2] | |
Regions with significant populations | |
Greece, Georgia, Armenia, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Israel, Iran, Cyprus, Palestine, Jordan, Germany, United States, Uzbekistan, Australia, Canada, Syria, Romania, Bulgaria, Egypt | |
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 |
The Pontic Greeks (Pontic: Ρωμαίοι, Ρωμιοί;[3][4][5][6][7] Turkish: Pontus Rumları or Karadeniz Rumları; Greek: Πόντιοι, romanized: Póndii or Ελληνοπόντιοι, romanized: Ellinopóndii; Georgian: პონტოელი ბერძნები, romanized: P'ont'oeli Berdznebi), also Pontian Greeks or simply Pontians, are an ethnically Greek[8][9] group indigenous to the region of Pontus, in northeastern Anatolia (in Turkey). Many later migrated in various waves between the Ottoman conquest of the Empire of Trebizond in 1461 and the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829. Common migratory destinations included other parts of Eastern Anatolia, the former Russian province of Kars Oblast in the Transcaucasus, and the country of Georgia.
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 Urums are included in this latter groups as well.
Pontic Greeks traditionally speak Pontic Greek, which speakers call Romeika. This is a distinct form of the standard Greek language; its unique linguistic evolution was due to the remoteness of Pontus from the rest of the Greek-speaking world.
The Pontic Greeks had a continuous presence in the region of Pontus (modern-day northeastern Turkey), Georgia, and Eastern Anatolia from at least 700 BC until the Greek genocide and the population exchange with Turkey in 1923.[10] They owe their ancestry to multiple different sources, detailed in "Origins" below.[11][12] Today, most Pontic Greeks live in Greece, especially in and around Thessaloniki in Greek Macedonia.
For example, there are 2 million Pontic Greeks worldwide, mostly in Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Germany, and Sweden.
Οι ξεριζωμένοι και διασκορπισμένοι στα πέρατα της οικουμένης έλληνες του Πόντου συμποσούνται σήμερα γύρω στα 2.500.000.
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)
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.
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 thriving oral culture into the last century and a whole genre of ballads comes down from the Ancient Greeks ...
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.
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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