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Dear fellow Armenians and people of Armenian descent.
My name is Damon, I am 26 years old, and I am of Armenian descent from my paternal grandmother's side.
My great grandfather was born and raised in Constantinople and my great grandmother was from Smyrni in Asia Minor. They both fled during the Genocide and The Great Fire respectively and met up by chance in Peraius in Greece in 1925. Soon after, my grandmother was born.
My grandmother met and married my Greek grandfather from the island of Skiathos, where my father was born.
Unfortunately, for reasons I do not fully know, my father did not grow up speaking any Armenian nor has he retained any semblance of his Armenian heritage and identity. From what other family members have hinted at from time to time, I have come to suspect that my father was targeted as a child for being a "half-breed" and perhaps as a coping mechanism he rejected everything to do with his Armenian side to prevent this from going on.
Unfortunately for me, I never got to meet my grandmother, as she passed away many years before I was born and as such I never got to know anything about Armenian life, culture, people and language, and I was hoping to gain some insight from people here.
In my father's defense, I can understand how he must of felt being the target of discrimination because I too have been on the receiving end of it from many Greek people growing up, especially people from my father's native island were a very small-minded racist attitude exists among the older generations.
For example, my mother is British (a true mixture too, as her father was Scots-Spanish and her mother was Irish-Anglo-Welsh) and there were many insatnces in which I nearly got into altercations with people over the fact that I wasn't named after my paternal grandfather (a very strong tradition in Greece to this very day) as most people blamed my mother for it, flat out accusing her of ruining Greek traditions and not being respectful of the memory of my grandfather (who died when my father was a 12).
I have lived 16 years in Greece and 10 years in the UK (having recently moved to Cyprus to complete my training as a lawyer) and having all these different nationalities and origins to my "blood-line" I often feel a need to learn about my (many!) lineages.
Hope my rant wasn't too long and that in the very least, I can pick up some basic Armenian phrases. :-)
My name is Damon, I am 26 years old, and I am of Armenian descent from my paternal grandmother's side.
My great grandfather was born and raised in Constantinople and my great grandmother was from Smyrni in Asia Minor. They both fled during the Genocide and The Great Fire respectively and met up by chance in Peraius in Greece in 1925. Soon after, my grandmother was born.
My grandmother met and married my Greek grandfather from the island of Skiathos, where my father was born.
Unfortunately, for reasons I do not fully know, my father did not grow up speaking any Armenian nor has he retained any semblance of his Armenian heritage and identity. From what other family members have hinted at from time to time, I have come to suspect that my father was targeted as a child for being a "half-breed" and perhaps as a coping mechanism he rejected everything to do with his Armenian side to prevent this from going on.
Unfortunately for me, I never got to meet my grandmother, as she passed away many years before I was born and as such I never got to know anything about Armenian life, culture, people and language, and I was hoping to gain some insight from people here.
In my father's defense, I can understand how he must of felt being the target of discrimination because I too have been on the receiving end of it from many Greek people growing up, especially people from my father's native island were a very small-minded racist attitude exists among the older generations.
For example, my mother is British (a true mixture too, as her father was Scots-Spanish and her mother was Irish-Anglo-Welsh) and there were many insatnces in which I nearly got into altercations with people over the fact that I wasn't named after my paternal grandfather (a very strong tradition in Greece to this very day) as most people blamed my mother for it, flat out accusing her of ruining Greek traditions and not being respectful of the memory of my grandfather (who died when my father was a 12).
I have lived 16 years in Greece and 10 years in the UK (having recently moved to Cyprus to complete my training as a lawyer) and having all these different nationalities and origins to my "blood-line" I often feel a need to learn about my (many!) lineages.
Hope my rant wasn't too long and that in the very least, I can pick up some basic Armenian phrases. :-)
Hope you like the site and we acquainted
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