Plea To Greek Brethren & Linguistic Genius'

[Cussa]

Hey guys,

Me and my friends were wondering about our last names the other day. And she's greek, from Sparta originally. Her last name is Spyridis.

Now we were wondering if the word has a meaning? I mean all names originally did. So can someone help me here?

Thanks

- Cussa

[Mythos]

Well, the root of Spyridis is Spyros, a Greek name. Spyros itself is a shortened form of Spyridon (Spyridoula is the female form), which probably comes from ancient Greek "spyridion" meaning basket. The -idis ending is very, very common among descendants of Pontian Greeks which came to Greece after the 1923 population exchange with Turkey.

[Stavroforos]

She may be descended from Sparta, but not ancient Sparta, as they stopped being.

[Seleucos of Olympia]

-idis is not common only among Pontic Greeks. It's the oldest known suffix in Greek names (Zeus was called "Kronides" - the e at the end is typically transliterated as i in english from modern greek). So Spyridis means "son of Spyros", as Mythos wrote, and I trust he got the rest of the definition correctly.