Macaroni

(piano music) 

Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go! 

From China to Italy to France and the Arab world everyone has claimed the origin of this word and for good reason as it’s one of those things that popped up everywhere more or less at the same time. I am going to give you the Greek version but please read the rest as all of them have an interesting story attached to it. Μακαρία (Makaria) was one of Hercules’s children and after his death they all fled to Athens. King Eurystheus however, was in pursuit of all the hero’s descendants and threatened Athens with war if the children  didn’t surrender. An oracle predicted that the way to avoid the war would be for one of the children  to be sacrificed to Persephone and when Makaria heard that she offered to be the one. Her name turned into an adjective Μακάριος (Makarios) and  came to mean ‘the one blessed in death’. A heroic death. Ancient Greeks used to leave oil, wine and a plate of dried food made by water barley and flour next to those graves. That food, to this day, is called ΜΑΚΑΡΟΝΙΑ/MACARONI

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