 |
| Author |
Message |
city
Site Admin
Joined: 15 Aug 2005
Posts: 3370
Location: Larnaca area
|
|
http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/main.php?id=36058&archive=1
| Quote: |
Linking up Cypriots across the globe
By Deema Osman
(archive article - Thursday, November 22, 2007)
A WEBSITE with the aim of reconnecting and reuniting Cypriot villagers around the globe has been launched.
Named xorianous.com, it is the brainchild of Tas Georgopoulos, Director of Xorianous Limited and Swift Digital Solutions
“The website is extremely functional and can be easily used by people of any age, He explained.”
The website has a similar design to popular online sites such as Facebook and MySpace, where each member has his/her own profile that other members can access.
According to Georgopoulos, the aim is to find and reunite people rather than to provide internet connectivity.
The profile page lists details of both of the user’s parents’ origins and also provides a list of other users that originate from those places.
In order to contact somebody, full membership costing £12.50 sterling is required. This grants the user one year of full use.
Giorgopoulos explained the idea behind the project. “My experience abroad in Greece and the UK, where people of Cypriot origin constantly ask ‘what village do you come from?’ gave me the initial thought. Cypriots look to try to find connections so I decided that this is a better and easier way to find out about other people’s origins.”
The website has been running for six days, and has had over 6,400 hits from Cypriots in countries including Canada, the USA and the UK, something that has pleased Giorgopoulos, who hopes constantly to expand the site with photo libraries and family trees.
He also wants to raise awareness of first-generation Cypriots about their origins and family and country, despite being born and raised abroad.
He added that despite the fact that most first-generation Cypriots do not use the internet, once their parents ask them to search for people in their home towns, they in turn will have access to that information and make use of it. |
What do people think about this project? Has anyone heard of it?
To me it looks biased. If its aiming at all Cypriots shouldn't then be all the villages names also in Turkish? It seems they are only Greek.
I mean I know that this is a bit of a problem (that we also once tackled here in the forum), but still....
It were not only Greek Cypriots that left the island. |
|
| Back to top |
|
Mete
Warnings : 3
Deputy
Joined: 16 Aug 2005
Posts: 1150
Location: Boston
|
|
| Quote: |
To me it looks biased. If its aiming at all Cypriots shouldn't then be all the villages names also in Turkish? It seems they are only Greek.
|
That's unfortunate. Why is it so hard for Greek Cypriots to embrace the multicultural nature of the island? Multiculturality should be seen as a gift rather than a curse. |
|
| Back to top |
|
stavrizatz
Mukhtar/is
Joined: 20 Feb 2006
Posts: 924
Location: Australia / Lefkosia
|
|
What do you mean it is biased? Villages and towns have only one name. Because Turkey changed the historical names of villages into Turkish ones, the names of the villages should appear in both the original name and the new name.
What I mean my village before 74 was Ayios Vasileios and then after it changed to Turkeli! Of course villages with Turkish names such as Goneyli, shouldn't appear in both languages either. |
|
| Back to top |
|
city
Site Admin
Joined: 15 Aug 2005
Posts: 3370
Location: Larnaca area
|
|
| stavrizatz wrote: |
What do you mean it is biased? Villages and towns have only one name. Because Turkey changed the historical names of villages into Turkish ones, the names of the villages should appear in both the original name and the new name.
What I mean my village before 74 was Ayios Vasileios and then after it changed to Turkeli! Of course villages with Turkish names such as Goneyli, shouldn't appear in both languages either. |
Stavri, are you telling me that pre 74 all villages had greek names? I might have this wrong but I think this was not the case. Also you give an example yourself, Goneyli. What I meant was that when I was looking at the drop- down-list I saw only villages with greek names. Thats why I said to me it looks biased. As I said I might have this wrong....
And that wasn't actually what I asked.  That was only my 2 cents.
I was rather looking for opinions regarding this project.... What do people think about something like that.
Is it good? Does it make sense? etc etc |
|
| Back to top |
|
repulsewarrior
Deputy
Joined: 06 Jan 2006
Posts: 1740
Location: Canada
|
|
i think that a grecophone got an idea, and realised it. not too complicated. if a turcophone did the same thing, we would be saying the same thing i hope.
personally i would not use it, call me paranoid, but in my family plenty disappeared, and i suspect that if the same people who made them disappear knew that i was alive, i would disappear as well. |
|
| Back to top |
|
Mete
Warnings : 3
Deputy
Joined: 16 Aug 2005
Posts: 1150
Location: Boston
|
|
| stavrizatz wrote: |
What do you mean it is biased? Villages and towns have only one name. Because Turkey changed the historical names of villages into Turkish ones, the names of the villages should appear in both the original name and the new name.
|
How unfortunate! Is that what your parents/teachers taught you? Village names are a little complicated, so let me explain.
Before 1974, Greek Cypriot villages, obviously, had Greek names. Turkish Cypriot and mixed villages sometimes had only Greek names, sometimes had only Turkish names and most of the time had both Turkish and Greek names.
As an example, my dad's village is a Turkish Cypriot village in Famagusta region and it was called Gornec before 1974 and it is still called the same. It also has a Greek name, Kornokipos, but nobody uses it because it's a Turkish Cypriot village.
The village name was not changed after 1974 because it was a Turkish name in the first place. Same goes for other villages like Gonyeli or even towns like Girne. Of course, there are many Greek Cypriot or mixed villages in the north whose names were "Turkified" after 1974 and I find this unacceptable.
The point is that villages and towns in Cyprus usually had Greek names but sometimes had both Greek and Turkish names even before 1974. So Turkish names of the villages do not necessarily imply that that village name was "Turkified" in 1974.
I think the correct way of handling this issue is to use 1974 names (both Greek and Turkish if they exist) for these villages/towns for now. When we have a future solution and people know where they live, we can ask the residents of a village to pick a name (or use two names for two languages). |
|
| Back to top |
|
repulsewarrior
Deputy
Joined: 06 Jan 2006
Posts: 1740
Location: Canada
|
|
| The issue of toponomy in Cyprus is an important one. With the "Turkification" of the north, much of the history attached to the names was erased. Note that many of the "Greek" names have their origin in Arabic, and clearly the Turkish Army, who instagated this change, have as a motive the elimination of any thought that this land may have a history, other than Greek, that is Cypriot, and that is rooted in the past, before the existence of a modern Greek State, or even the existenceof an Ottaman empire. It is a tragedy from which all Mankind will suffer if it is permitted to sustain itself. |
|
| Back to top |
|
moonskin
Mukhtar/is
Joined: 29 Aug 2005
Posts: 515
Location: Freiburg, Germany
|
|
If they could write the names of the villages with the usual Greek name plus the ORIGINAL Turkish Cypriot naming, which is generally a phonetic derivation from the Greek names anyway, then it would have been perfect.
Could you guys imagine that such a thing happened with the labels at the entrance of each town in north and south? That would be really nice!
But of course, it is just a dream and it will never happen!
On the matter of village names, go to this thread: http://www.talkcyprus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2622 and find the post by moonskin where you will find the entire list of villages with the original Turkish Cypriot naming (pre-74) and the changed (post-74) naming together, so that you can tell the difference. |
|
| Back to top |
|
xorianous
Village guest
Joined: 04 Dec 2007
Posts: 1
|
|
Greetings all,
I am part of the creators of Xorianous.com and found this thread a couple of days ago.
Firstly I would like to thank you all for your interests and discussions.
Secondly I would like to clear a couple of things up so that everyone's mind can be at ease:
Xorianous.com has been designed to be a non-political site and we will not accept any 'abusive' behaviour on our site towards any type of Cypriot. The site is open to all types of Cypriots, Greek, Turkish, English, Russian....anyone. As a matter of fact we already have some turkish-cypriot members.
We are not interested in who is at fault or the reasons why we are not allowed to live together (as we did pre-74). That job is for the politicians.
My mother is from the northern side and our family had many turkish cypriot friends and neighbours. We want greek and turkish cypriots to reunite, we want to forget the politicians and reunite ourselves.
Now to the reasons for the site being the way it is:
Because of time constraints we had to get this site up and running. We got the site up as a core service and will be continually adding to it making it more and more functional. The easiest thing for us being greek-cypriot based in the UK was to get the site up in English with the Greek names as they appeared on the resources we had.
Another reason for this is because we have many ties into the greek community for both organisations, companies, radio stations and newspapers. It was the best thing to start getting the word out.
The future developments will include a Greek translation, a Turkish translation and indeed any other language translation that it required (German for arguments sake if we have an increase in German members).
We will also make sure that the Turkish village names are displayed.
I hope that this post will make everyone more at ease with the purpose of the site and that it is not a 'Greek' site, it is open to everyone, and bear in mind it is a fresh site being up for only 3 weeks. We have had over 20,000 hits already and we are really hopeful that we as "Cypriots" can reunite across the world. Maybe this will in future change Cyprus's current state to one where everyone gets on the way we all did pre-74.
Regards
The Xorianous Team. |
|
| Back to top |
|
repulsewarrior
Deputy
Joined: 06 Jan 2006
Posts: 1740
Location: Canada
|
|
yiasou xorianous and welcome.
i, and i'm sure many on this forum salute you.
the thread below may be of help to you...
http://www.talkcyprus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2622
there are many threads under this topic, cyprus problem resources, which i am sure will be of interest as well.
please don't be a stranger, come and visit us often!
once again, sixaritiria!!! |
|
| Back to top |
|
city
Site Admin
Joined: 15 Aug 2005
Posts: 3370
Location: Larnaca area
|
|
Thank you Xorianous and welcome to the forum.
Thanks for taking the time to sign up and post additional information regarding your project. Usually media info is not enough to clearly understand and/or see the whole picture. Maybe it would be good to include some of the explanations you gave here onto your website. Just a thought... |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
All times are GMT + 3 Hours
|
| Page 1 of 1 |
| |
 
 
Link Partners
3203 Attacks blocked
|
Register 
Log in 
Album 
Home