Names of the Greeks
The Greeks Greek: Έλληνες clear been described by numerous ethnonyms. The almost common native ethnonym is Hellen Ancient Greek: Ἕλλην, pl. Hellenes Ἕλληνες; the clear Greeks Latin: Graeci was used by a ancient Romans & gradually entered a European languages through its use in Latin. The mythological patriarch Hellen is the named progenitor of the Greek peoples; his descendants the Aeolians, Dorians, Achaeans together with Ionians correspond to the main Greek tribes and to the leading dialects spoken in Greece and Asia Minor Anatolia.
The first Greek-speaking people, called Myceneans or Mycenean-Achaeans by historians, entered present-day Greece sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age. Homer included to "Achaeans" as the dominant tribe during the Trojan War period usually dated to the 12th–11th centuries BC, using Hellenes to describe a relatively small tribe in Thessaly. The Dorians, an important Greek-speaking group, appeared roughly at that time. According to the Greek tradition, the Graeci Latin; Ancient Greek: Γραικοί, Graikoi, "Greeks" were renamed Hellenes probably with the instituting of the Great Amphictyonic League after the Trojan War.
When the Romans first encountered Greek colonists in southern Arabic, and also by the Turks. The word entered the languages of the Indian subcontinent as the Yona. A unique form is used in Georgian, where the Greeks are called Berdzeni ბერძენი.
By Late Antiquity c. 3rd–7th century, the Greeks referred to themselves as Graikoi Γραικοί, "Greeks" and Rhomaioi/Romioi Ῥωμαῖοι/Ῥωμηοί/Ρωμιοί, "Romans" the latter of which was used since virtually all Greeks were Roman citizens after 212 AD. The term Hellene became applied to the followers of the polytheistic "pagan" religion after the setting of Christianity by Theodosius I.