Over the years, I've had a lot of questions about my last name. Since it seems to fascinate people so much i've put together a little FAQ here of frequently asked questions and their answers:

1) Is your name Greek?

Yes.

2) How do you pronounce it?

It is not as obvious as it seems. The problem is that when my father came here and they tried to translate his name into English letters, the Greek and English equivalents got confused. Here is an example:

My name is pronounced Kara-Panayotee-this.

The problem is that the 'g' in my name is actually a gamma 'γ' and while gamma can make the typically 'g' sound, in this context it is actually like a 'y' and the 'i' right after it is silent.

Another problem is the 'd' at the end. This 'd' is actually a delta 'δ' and contrary to popular belief, delta does not make a 'd' sound. It makes a 'th' sound like in the world 'this'.

Here is my name in Greek letters and you can see what I mean: Πολυκαρπος Καραπαναγιοτιδις

3) Here are some other Greek letters that are misunderstood:

χ does not make a 'chi' sound. In fact it is like the letter 'h' and makes a 'h' sound. In fact, most Greek letters are named directly after the sound they make. And in this case the letter is called 'Hee.'

β does not make a 'b' sound. In fact it is like the letter 'v'. Therefore, this letter is called 'Veeta.' To make things even more confusing, the letter 'ν' in the Greek alphabet actually makes an 'n' sound like in the word 'not.' And the letter 'ρ', called 'Ro' makes an 'r' sounds like in 'river.'

While 'δ' makes a 'th' sound as in the word 'this', 'θ' makes a 'th' sound but more like in the word 'throw'. This is why it is called 'Theeta.'

4) Why is your name so long?

This I am not sure about, except to say that my name is a compound word and each part has a seperate meaning. From what i've been told it goes like this:

Kara is the Turkish word for the colour 'Black' and Panayotee means 'Mother Mary' or 'Madonna' from the Greek Orthodox religion and is a popular first name for both males and females since Greek words retain masculine and feminine forms sort of like French. Finally, the 'this' part is just an ending similar to the common English suffix form of 'son' in examples like 'Stephen-son'.

Finally, there is apparently a famous type of late medieval painting influenced by the Byzantine empire style (which coincidentally is where my ancestors hailed from), called the 'Black-Madonnas.' See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Madonna