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Nafsica or Nafsika

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Jimbo:
A while ago there was a discussion on the subject of how to spell Princess Nafsika on Facebook. I researched this quite thoroughly, and you may find the results interesting or tedious:

It's all down to the Romans and Latin. Latin (or Italian) does not have a K character. So when the Roman and later scholars wrote about the myth of how Odysseus was shipwrecked on an island bearing a marked resemblance to Kerkyra, they changed all the Ks to CC. Greek does not have the letter C. So it's about alphabets.

There is also some confusion about the letter U in Greek. It's really a V or F sound. I was brought up to pronounce Epidaurus in the Bible as epi-daw-rus, but if you've been to the wonderful theatre near Nafplion you'll know is epi-dav-ross. The Latin scholars, confronted with the word Nafsika in Greek changed it Nausiccaa - which sounds to us like a stomach complaint.

In Homer it's Nausikâ. Notice the kappa (K) and the U (F or V) and you get Nafsika. O Spiros fully accepted the answer, so you may notice that the webcam is Nafsika and not Nafsica.

Keep warm!

Karen:
Thanks Jim, great post :)

Tredegar Boy:
I stand corrected Jimbo. I will duly correct future posts

maggiesaes:
That is interesting,I find etymology fascinating.

Jimbo:
Thanks, all. I should really have said that the U is actually mostly halfway between F and V sounds. That's hard for English-speakers to distinguish.

Greek people are endlessly forgiving about these things, but it's nice to get it right.

I find the letter G a bit of a problem. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's almost an H sound. For example, England in Greek is Agglia and that's fairly hard with two gammas - Agg -LEE-a.

But the real name of the village is, of course, not San Stefanos but Agios Stefanos, and it seems to be much softer - AH-yee-oss STAY-fan-oss.

I'm sure Tredegar Boy will be able to help with Welsh, which has similar traps!

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