Bridge

Along with the photos of the Greek Orthodox wedding (below), which I found on the corner of 14th and PPW, there was a genealogy chart compiled by Judge George P. Lewnes in 1994, so I imagine he was the charming groom. According to this chart, Lewnes was born in 1923, and his name appears to have been Americanized from the Greek surname Liounis. The first page of the chart states "In the 14th Century, A knight templar from Lyons, France, returning from a crusade in the holy land, landed with his crew at Mani on the Southwest cost of Peloponnesos, Greece. His name is unknown. He married into the Petropoulea clan of Nifi. They had three sons. Rosakis, Vendikos, Liounakos."

I learned from reading the rest of the chart that it's possible to get a little high from the classical grandeur cunningly staccato and richly multisyllabic classically heavy rhythm of Greek names given the right state of mind. Try it if you like...Georgios Aspasia Kaliopi Constantina Panagiotis Kostas Visiliki Ioannis Anastasios Paraskevas Ekaterini Stavros Demetra Stavroula Fotios Antonia Hartini Politimi Aristomeni Yannoula Iphegenia Beula Nicholas Hariklia Evangelos Aspasia Panagiotitsa Kleomeni Stamatika Leonidas Basilios Prokopi Eriketi Theofanis Marika.

How ya doin?

I suppose each name has a root word which inspired it, but when I tried to look up the meaning of Panagiotitsa in the baby name book I came up blank. Maybe the name derives from the Panagiotis, which I understand is a picturesque shipwreck lying on the coast of an Ionian Island. More likely both names derive from "pan" meaning "all" plus something else I'm too ignorant to discern.

More on names, odd isn't it that our Bishop Francis X. Ford, who died in a Chinese prison under authority of Communists in 1952, was cousin to Ita Ford, also from Brooklyn, a Maryknoll nun murdered in El Salvador in 1980 under military orders from a Capitalist regime. I understand those who ordered her killing and those of the women she was with lived on comfortably in Florida. Makes the head spin.