Konstantinou

No Greek name carries what Konstantinos carries. Constantine the Great founded Constantinople in 330, and Greeks afterwards called it simply the City, as though there were no other. Constantine XI was the last emperor to hold it: he died on its walls in 1453 when the Ottomans took it. The loss was so complete that tradition refused to treat it as finished, and out of that refusal came the legend of the marble emperor, turned to stone and waiting, who would one day wake and take the City back.

A name standing at both ends of that story did not stay in the palace. It went into the ordinary given-name stock of Orthodox households. The surname Konstantinou is what happened when those households were finally required to write a fixed family name down.

The mechanism that kept the name circulating is domestic and very old. A first son was named for his paternal grandfather and a second for his maternal, daughters for their grandmothers in the same order, so a Konstantinos reappeared in the same house every other generation. Cousins within one family therefore carried the identical official name and were told apart in speech only by shortened forms and diminutives. Takis, heard everywhere in Greece, is a shortened diminutive of Kostakis, itself from Konstantinos.

Fixed surnames arrived late. Hereditary family names were an elite habit in the Byzantine centuries, rare well into the 800s and normal among great families only by the 11th and 12th. Only in the 19th century, as the modern Greek state built its registers, did patronymic surnames become fixed and common.

Konstantinou is that patronymic frozen in the genitive: 'of Konstantinos', the son entered in the register as belonging to the father. The Pontic Greeks built the same name the northern way, as Konstantinidis.

Vasilis Konstantinou, born on 19 November 1947, signed for Panathinaikos in 1964 and spent his first years as back-up goalkeeper to Takis Ikonomopoulos, the man who came in when the situation called for it. It called for it in the 1971 European Cup semi-final against Red Star Belgrade, the tie that sent Panathinaikos to the final. He became first choice afterwards and held the position until 1983, taking five Alpha Ethniki titles from 1964-65 to 1976-77, three Greek Cups and the 1977 Balkans Cup.

His summers went to Canada: the National Soccer League in 1973 with Toronto Homer, then Toronto Metros-Croatia in 1978 and the same club renamed Toronto Blizzard the year after. He was capped 28 times by Greece and kept goal for them at UEFA Euro 1980, and finished playing in 1984 at OFI. He came back to Panathinaikos in a different chair, as the club's president from 2017 to 2019.

Tasos Konstantinou was born at Paliometocho in March 1951 and taken to London in 1959 when his family emigrated; three of his brothers played senior football in Cyprus, for APOEL, Olympiakos Nicosia and ASIL. He was in Fulham's under-18 side when EPA Larnaca came to London for friendlies in 1966, were impressed by the 15-year-old and handed him an open-date plane ticket to come back and join their youth team. He used it. Promoted to the men's side in 1968, he won the Cypriot championship in 1970 as the league's top scorer with 15 goals and its player of the season, at 19.

AEK Athens paid 600,000 drachmas for him on 27 July 1972 and got eight years and a nerveless penalty taker. On 20 April 1975 he came on against Panathinaikos in the 92nd minute and scored the winner from the spot a minute later, in a 4-3. In Moscow on 29 September 1976, with a UEFA Cup tie in extra time, he set the ball down in the last minute and beat Gontar to put AEK through; the run took them past Derby County, where he scored in a 2-3 away win on 3 November, and on to the semi-finals. He scored in the 6-1 European Cup win over Porto and again against Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest in October 1978, and he left with two consecutive championships and the 1978 double.

He played 13 times for Cyprus. In September 2008 the professional footballers' associations of Greece and Cyprus staged a match in his honour at the GSZ Stadium; he turned out for both teams and was decorated afterwards for what he had given to the football of both countries. He died in 2019 at 68, and the municipality of Saronikos gave his name to the Kalyvia Stadium.

Michalis Konstantinou, born at Paralimni on 19 February 1978, is the leading scorer in the history of the Cyprus national team, with 32 goals in 78 appearances. He started at his home-town club, Enosis Neon Paralimni, where 17 goals in 25 games made him the Cypriot championship's top scorer in 1996-97, then crossed to Iraklis in Greece in 1997 and scored 61 in 119 over four seasons. His first international goals came against San Marino at the Tsirion Stadium on 10 February 1999.

In 2001 Panathinaikos paid 8 million euros for him, the highest fee ever paid in the Greek Super League, and the money bought Champions League nights. In the 2001-02 quarter-final at the Camp Nou he scored from 45 metres, though Barcelona came back to win 3-1 and go through. He took the league and cup double with Panathinaikos in 2003-04, joined Olympiacos in 2005, opened the scoring in the 3-0 cup final win over AEK Athens and collected three more championships. He finished where he began, back in Cyprus with Omonia for their 20th title in 2009-10, then Anorthosis Famagusta and AEL Limassol before retiring in January 2014.

Alexandros Konstantinou, born on 11 April 1992, came through the youth team at Northampton Town and was given a professional contract for 2010-11. He made his debut in the League Cup against Reading on 24 August 2010 and set up an equaliser in the last minute of extra time. After trials at Walsall and King's Lynn Town he signed for Apollon Limassol in August 2012, won the Cypriot Cup in his first season there and played through the Europa League group stage. APOEL signed him in June 2014 and he was part of the squad that took the Cypriot championship and cup double in 2014-15, before a season on loan at Doxa Katokopias.

The route was his father's first. Kostakis Konstantinou also played football in England and for Apollon Limassol, and was capped 35 times by Cyprus.

Away from the pitch the name runs wide. Giorgos Konstantinou, born in 1934, is a Greek actor and director. Stavros Konstantinou, born in Nicosia on 25 August 1984, won Super Idol, the Greek version of Pop Idol shown by MEGA TV in 2004 in its only season under that title, and put out albums to 2009 and singles for a decade after; he has supported the Cyprus Anti-Cancer Society. Chris Constantinou is an English musician.

Others carried it into laboratories and embassies: Martha Constantinou is a Cypriot-American physicist, Clay Constantinou, born 1951, an American diplomat. Sport keeps producing them: the Cypriot distance runner Fivos Constantinou, born 1981, the Cypriot footballer Andreas Constantinou, born 1980, the Australian-American football player Nik Constantinou, born 1999. Among them is the Greek cyclist Konstantinos Konstantinou, in whom the grandfather-naming custom and the frozen genitive meet: given name and family name are the same word, one in the nominative and one in the genitive.