If you ask a Greek person what they call their country, they will say Hellas (Ελλάς or Ελλάδα). They call themselves Hellenes (Έλληνες). The Greek language is Helleniki. Greece, in the eyes of the Greeks, has always been and remains Hellas.
So where on earth did the word "Greece" come from — and why does the entire English-speaking world (and most of Europe, with equivalents like Grèce, Grecia, Griechenland) use a name that Greeks themselves don't recognise?
The Roman Connection
The answer lies in Rome. When the Romans encountered the people of the Greek peninsula and islands in the 4th–3rd centuries BC, they did not call them Hellenes. They called them Graeci — and their land Graecia. This word is the direct ancestor of every European variant of "Greece."
But why did the Romans use this term? The answer traces back even further — to a specific small tribe.
The Graeci Tribe
The ancient Greek poet Hesiod, writing in the 8th–7th centuries BC, refers to a people called the Graikoi (Γραικοί) — a tribe located in the region of Epirus (northwestern Greece and parts of modern Albania). This tribe is believed to have been among the earliest Greek-speaking people that early Italian colonists and traders encountered when Greek settlers began establishing colonies in southern Italy and Sicily from around 750 BC.
These early Greek colonists in Italy — many of them from the Graikoi or nearby communities — became known to the neighbouring Italic peoples, including the early Romans and their predecessors, as the Graeci. As Roman trade and contact with the wider Greek world expanded, the name applied to that single tribal group gradually generalized to cover all Greek-speaking peoples.
The philosopher Aristotle in his Meteorologica refers to the Graikoi specifically as the ancient inhabitants of the Dodona/Epirus region — one of the oldest oracular sites in Greece — suggesting this was a genuine, historically specific community rather than a Roman invention.
Why Greeks Call Themselves Hellenes
The Greeks' own name for themselves derives from Hellen — the mythological ancestor of the Greek people in Greek mythology. According to the mythology codified by Hesiod, Hellen was the son of Deucalion (the Greek Noah-equivalent, survivor of a great flood) and Pyrrha. Hellen's sons — Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus — gave their names to the main Greek tribal groupings: Dorians, Ionians (via Ion, son of Xuthus), and Aeolians.
The name "Hellenes" is thus a self-identifying term rooted in mythological common ancestry — a way of expressing shared cultural, linguistic, and religious identity across the hundreds of independent city-states that made up the Greek world. When the Athenian orator Isocrates in 380 BC described what it meant to be Greek, he said it was not a matter of blood but of education and culture: "Hellenes are those who share our culture, not those who share our descent."
How "Greece" Spread to English
The Latin Graecia passed into Old French as Grèce, into Middle English as Grece, and stabilised as Greece in modern English by the 16th century. The same Latin root explains Griechenland (German), Grecia (Spanish/Italian), and equivalents across most European languages.
The Name Hellas Today
Modern Greek law and official documents use Hellas or Hellenic Republic — the country's official name is Hellenic Republic (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, Elliniki Dimokratia). The Olympic airline was Olympic Hellenic Airlines. The national football team is the Hellenic National Team. For Greeks, the word "Greece" in foreign languages is understood but registers as a foreign imposition of a foreign name — the linguistic legacy of Roman conquest and the centuries of European tradition that followed it.
In practical terms, using either name in Greece will be understood perfectly. But knowing to say Hellas to a Greek person and watching their small nod of appreciation is one of travel's minor but genuine pleasures.