Everyday LifeGreek → English
Nectarios
/nɛkˈtɑrioʊs/noun
A Greek male name, most associated with the modern saint of Aegina.
The Greek roots
νέκταρ
néktar
drink of the gods
Literally: “of nectar”
Follow a root:νέκταρ3 words
The story of the word
Nectar is what the Olympians drink while mortals get wine, and the name gives a child the divine ration. Nectarios of Aegina, who died in 1920 after years of official disgrace, was recognised as a saint in 1961 and is now among the most visited in Greece. The old proposal that νέκταρ decomposes into nek-, death, and -tar, overcoming, making it the death-defeating drink, is attractive and still argued over.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Greek → English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
nectarnectarine
In a sentence
Half the boys in the village called Nectarios were named after the saint on Aegina.