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For a topic outline on this subject, see List of basic culture topics

The Culture Portal

The word culture is derived from the Latin root cultura or cultus meaning to "inhabit, cultivate, or honour".

In general, culture refers to human activity; different definitions of culture different theories for understanding, or criteria for valuing human activity. Anthropologists use the term to refer to the universal human capacity to classify experiences and to encode and communicate them symbolically. They regard this capacity as a defining feature of the genus Homo. Since culture is learned, people living in different places have different cultures. There can be different cultures in different countries, and there can also be shared cultures among continents. This portal covers all aspects of culture.

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Today the Greeks call themselves Hellenes (Έλληνες), though they have been known by a number of different names throughout history. The soldiers that fell at Thermopylae did so as Hellenes. During the time of Jesus, the term shifted and any person of non-Jewish faith was called Hellene. By late Antiquity, the Greeks referred to themselves as Romaioi, i.e. Romans. Western Europeans used the term Greeks and the Persians and the Turks used the term Yunans, i.e. Ionians. An interesting and unique form is kept in Georgian. In ancient times, Georgians (Colchians and Iberians) called Greeks ბერძენი berdzeni. This form derives from the Georgian word ბრძენი brdzeni – wise. According to Georgian historians, the name is connected with the notion that philosophy was born in Greece. Modern Georgians still call Greeks ბერძენი berdzeni and Greece საბერძნეთი saberdznet'i, 'Greeks' land' or literally 'land of the wise'. The onset of every historical era was accompanied by a new name, either entirely new or formerly old and forgotten, extracted from tradition or borrowed from foreigners. Each of them was significant in its own time, and all can be used interchangeably, which means that the Greeks are a polyonymous people.