Cyprus-Forum.com

[Pyrpolizer]

Nikitas,

The main reason for forcing the TCs to adopt new surnames was to confuse the property issue. The second reason was to blur the settlers issue.

[Kikapu]

This was a conversation I had with VP last year, 2006.

Viewpoint,
This is the off subject, so I apologize for that, but we TC's had a unique last name (family name) system in the past history of Cyprus, where we all had 2 first names, first and last names. This happened when a child is born and is given a name, the childs last name then became the fathers first name. In my case, my last name is my fathers first name, and my first name is my fathers last name, since I was named after my grand father (my fathers father )In other words, the last name (family name) always changed from one generation to the next. Good luck trying to find TC's family tree.!!
Anyway, can you confirm to me that this practise is being put a stop to by the Authorities and those that want to live in Cyprus from abroad now or in the future, will need to change their last name to a "standard family name". Why is this being done now. Does this has anything to do with Turkey.? Thanks.

You have to take on a family surname by law now. If you ever come to settle in the TRNC you have to make an application to take on a family surname once and for all. This can be the same surname now used by your father or your uncles (amca) surnames. If those are not what you want you have the right to register something original but that will be that you can not revert to any other surname after you have made your first choice.

http://www.cyprus-forum.com/viewtopic.p ... &start=180

[Nikitas]

Thanks Pyro,

As you might know the Greek media is constantly harping on about the seriousness and superiority of the Turkish diplomatic corps and their professionalism. But then something like the name changes come along that point to a wholly different direction- one of petty tricks to justify mundane things like land theft, if that really is the reason behind the changes as you say. The claims made in pursuit of the oil issue also point to that direction- a diplomatic corps that spends a lot of effort on justifying plain theft with all kinds of mental acrobatics.

One wonders how the Turkish Cypriots have gotten themselves into such a trap with these people. Again I wonder if it was apathy or something else. The old justification that it was repression from the Greek Cypriots is not valid so many years after the "peace operation". It must be something else.

[MR-from-NG]

I never liked or agreed with this surname s**t adopted from Turkey. My father chose to just add a "ler" to our surname, we couldn't register our own name because it had already been registered by some big-shot in Nicosia and my father was in England when all this was happening in Cyprus.

I have my "Kimlik" that carries this name but I never use it in my day to day life in Cyprus, I do all my official work with my British passport which carries my original name.

I hope it is one day abolished and everybody use their original names again.

[Kikapu]

I never liked or agreed with this surname s**t adopted from Turkey. My father chose to just add a "ler" to our surname, we couldn't register our own name because it had already been registered by some big-shot in Nicosia and my father was in England when all this was happening in Cyprus.

I have my "Kimlik" that carries this name but I never use it in my day to day life in Cyprus, I do all my official work with my British passport which carries my original name.

I hope it is one day abolished and everybody use their original names again.

I should have mentioned it, as MR-from-NG reminded me, that this name change is purely for the "TRNC" and has no reflection on one's "real names" on other official documents in other countries.

[Nikitas]

This custom of names alteranting between generations is common to Greek Cypriots too, and it stumped many a British policeman as when they stop two brothers and ask "your name": one says Kyriakos Panayiotou (literally Kyriakos the son of Panayiotis- customary Cypriot naming) and the other says George Kyriakidis, using the family surname. But even the British did not enforce a change. they got used to it. And well done to all you guys who insist on customary names on your foreign passports.

In my family we are half and half, some have opted for the family name which started as a nickname, like they often do, and the other half use the customary formula mainly because they do not like the nickname.

[Pyrpolizer]

Nikitas,

leaving aside the REAL reasons why the Tcs were forced to adopt a unique family name(surname), there is also a good logic behind it.
The Gcs were doing exactly the same thing as the TCs, that caused a lot of confussion, but slowly abandoned it without been forced.
Lets take the example of someone called Andreas Christou.
It was common practice among the GCs in the past as well, to get the father name as surname .For example when that Andreas Christou had a child with the name Yiannis, his full name was becoming Yiannis Andreou instead of Yiannis Christou.

Todays international (?) practice is to have a 3 part name

a)first name-What everybody calls you
b)Fathers name
c)Family name (that never changes from generation to generation)

There are slight variations in some countries, I think for example Russians use c) a gender depending surname

Our Svetlana's full name for example could be Svetlana Vladimirovich Gorbachova
whereas her brother could be Sergey Vladimirovich Gorbachov

[BirKibrisli]

Let me add a bit of historical perspective to the NAME debate.In Ottoman times it was customary for people to take on their father's first name.
So if you were Ahmet and your dad was Mehmet,your full name was Ahmet Mehmet...If you had a son and you wanted to name him after your father,he would be Mehmet Ahmet...and on and on it would go.

In Turkey this was changed by one of Ataturk's reforms sometime after 1923. Every family had to take on a surname,as it is in the West. But since Cyprus was under the British by then the Turkish Cypriots carried on their centuries old tradition of taking on their father's first name...

Now that Turkey calls the shots in the trnc,they simply extended their surname law to their newly acquired subjects. It is nothing other then enforced "Turkification",and Murataga knows it well. He aslo knows what Kikapu means by "non-Cypriot name" but is playing silly buggers...What is happening to the TCs in the North is nothing less then cultural genocide and ethnic cleansing. And the tragedy is they seem to be willing participants in their own identity extinction...

[zan]

I did no understand the post in Turkish Zan,

But the custom to have two first names applies in the Greek Cypriot community, but no one has thought up of a mandatory system to change it. Nor has anyone thought of any need to change it. Things are obviously run on different priorities in the north. It is lucky that i read people llike Sener Levent, the late Ozgur, Akinci and others, otherwise I would depend on people in here to give me a totally false picture of how Turkish Cypriots face the "freedom offensive" from Turkey.

As for the National Council, it is not a rubber stamping process, different parties and persons have different ideas and approaches and it includes the whole spectrum, from the ecologists party to the governing DIKO. How else can you build consensus in a multy party system on a national issue?

All this applies when you are given fare and decisive options....We live as we need to and as the process of the siege by the "RoC' dictates...The saying that beggars can't be choosers is very accurate in this instance. As we have said all along...If our GC cousins cannot give us a fare option to live as in our own country then we will go fort the next best option.....It seems that this is the best option anyway from the goings on and refusal by the GCs in seeing what is really going on.

[iceman]

Sounds like Kalyoncu (non Cypriot name) is throwing a lot of unrelated crap on the wall, to see what will stick and what doesn't.

Kikapu
As always you are "assuming" things from a distance....
Omer Kalyoncu happens to be a member of a very well known Turkish Cypriot family from Kyrenia and their surname has been Kalyoncu for centuries..
In fact,Kalyoncu family is so well known,their property in Kyrenia was documented on the first map made by the British administration back in 1883