The naming of the house

A great Greek House must have a Great Name and our greek is severely limited.

From the first times that we arrived here Robbert’s only greek was restricted to the odd word that he’s heard somewhere and kept repeating because it ‘sounded right’. Ella ella! he would say, (which means: come, come in a slightly impatient way, or he would keep repeating, Katse katzo! which ended up meaning nothing…those words don’t exist in the greek language, but for Robbert they ‘sounded right’!

So with the help of our friend Savas in Cape Town, we got down to naming our house after the odd word that ‘sounded right’ as well as meant something: El a Mesa – which means ‘come inside’.

That sounded right for a while, but the beautiful almond trees outside our back door kept resonating with me. Nobody has almond trees like we do on this island! And the word amugdalē, (google dictionary)pronounced: a-meek-thal-yá, (with an accent on the a) just sounds so beautiful…

And so one evening over dinner in Athens, we met a lovely young Greek waiter, who just had a nice manner, gave us great advice about eating something we have never tried before, manouri cheese, made from lambs milk. He was a wealth of information in many other ways and turned out to be called Apostoulos!! He was a saint! And thus became the blessed one to make the decision: Ella Mesa or e Amugdalē. Well, he chose e Amugdalē, says it sounded more authentic and more interesting. I had to give Robbert a couple of lessons so he could pronounce and remember the name, but he likes it and is finally another difficult word richer. So there we are…the Almond tree….I was going to go Under the Almond Tree, but Robbert stopped me….!

In the mean time I have had to consult numerous villagers and townsfolk(explanation for this later) in order to get the correct spelling. So it turns out that what we have above is a nut, to make it a tree, we have to write it: e Amigthalia. And this is the English way to write it, because the greek way has too many different spellings...no-one here can actually agree on it!!! They must be Greek!