Category talk:Greek explorers

We need a different name

Category:Greek people is part of a set of categories meant to sort people by the country they were part of. The problem here is that before 1821/1830 there was no Greece. After that year a lot of people in the Ottoman Empire, in Egypt and some other places think of themselves as in everyway Greeks who live outside of Greece, and some want to make where they live part of Greece. Such people are not "of Greek descent" in almost all cases, but ethnic Greeks. We seem to lack a good way to categorize them. Since in modern usage Greek has been coopted to mean nationals of Greece, we really need a different category and structure for those who were ethnic Greeks, who identified as ethnic Greeks, but lived outside of the country of Greece. I think the best naming is "ethnic Geek". Only one of the people here is an actual suvject/citizen of the modern state of Greece, and so if used as most of these categories are it would be reduced to one entry. I think we should rename this to "ethnic Greek explorers" since that would cover a broader set of people. During much of the age of exploration where ethnic Greeks lived was primarily divided between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Venice. While living in those entities might be somewhat defining for the people here, I think an argument can be made that they were a group based on their ethnic unity. It is important to have categories that have clear definitions, and conflating a category meant for people based on being subjects/citizens of a particular nation with a category grouping people by ethnicity is not a good thing. The one actual subject of Greece was also ethnic Greek, and he can go here and be clearly categorized based on his connection to the Greek state with other categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:53, 15 May 2023 (UTC)