The name of Greece differs in Greek compared with the names used for the country in other languages and cultures, just like the names of the Greeks. The ancient and modern name of the country is Hellas or Hellada, and its official name is the Hellenic Republic, "Helliniki Dimokratia". In English, however, the country is usually called Greece, which comes from the Latin Graecia (as used by the Romans) and literally means 'the land of the Greeks'.

The English name Greece and the similar adaptations in other languages derive from the Latin name Graecia (Greek: Γραικία), literally meaning 'the land of the Greeks', which was used by Ancient Romans to denote the area of modern-day Greece. Similarly, the Latin name of the nation was Graeci, which is the origin of the English name Greeks.

William Smith notes in his Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography that foreigners frequently refer to people by a different name (an exonym) from their native one (an endonym).

Aristotle was the first to use the name Graeci (Γραικοί), in his Meteorology. He wrote that the area around Dodona and the Achelous River was inhabited by the Selli and a people, who had been called Graeci but were called Hellenes by his time.

From that statement, it is asserted that the name of Graeci was once widely used in Epirus and the rest of the western coast of Greece. It thus became the name by which the Hellenes were known to the Italic peoples, who were on the opposite side of the Ionian Sea.

According to Hesiod, in his Catalogue of Women, Graecus was the son of Pandora and Zeus and gave his name to the people who followed the Hellenic customs. His brother Latinus gave his name to the Latins.

Similarly, the eponymous Hellen is supposed to have given his name to the Greeks, or Hellenes.In his Ethnica, Stephanus of Byzantium also states that Graecus, the son of Thessalus, was the origin of the name Graeci for the Hellenes.

The name Yūnān, came through Old Persian during the Achaemenid Empire (550-333 BC). It was derived from the Old Persian Yauna for the Ionian Greeks (Ancient Greek: Ἰάονες, iāones), on the western coast of Asia Minor and were the first Greeks to come into contact with the Persians. The term would eventually be applied to all the Greeks. Today, words derived from Yūnān can be found in Persian, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kurdish, Armenian (as Yūnānistan "land of Yūnān"; -istan "land" in Persian), Arabic, Hebrew (Biblical and Modern)(Yavan יָוָן), Aramaic (identical to Hebrew), Indian languages (such as Hindi and Urdu), Pashto, Laz, Indonesian, and Malay.

The eastern part of the Roman Empire, which was predominantly Greek-speaking, gave rise to the name Ῥωμανία (Rhomania or Romania). In fact, for a long time that started in Late Antiquity, the Greeks called themselves Ῥωμαῖοι (sg. Ῥωμαῖος: Romans). Those terms or related ones are still sometimes used even in Modern Greek: Ρωμιός (from Ῥωμαῖος), Ρωμιοσύνη.

There was tension with Western Europe on how Roman the western and the eastern parts of the Roman Empire really were. The historian Hieronymus Wolf, after the Eastern Roman Empire had ceased to exist, was the first to call it the Byzantine Empire, the term that later became usual in the West. However, because it lasted almost 1000 years longer than the Western Roman Empire, Persians, Arabs, and Turks, all in the East, used and sometimes still use terms from Rhomania or Rome, such as Rûm, to refer to its land or people.

List of names in other languages

The first major form of names derives from the Latin Graecus and Graecia or their equivalent forms in Greek whence the former derive themselves.

These terms have fallen out of use in Greek.

Greeks are known as:

Albanian: Greqia
Afrikaans: Griekeland
Basque: Grezia
Bulgarian: Гърция (Gǎrtsiya)
Catalan: Grècia
Cornish: Pow Grek
Croatian: Grčka
Czech: Řecko
Danish: Grækenland
Dutch: Griekenland
English: Greece
Estonian: Kreeka
Filipino: Gresya
Finnish: Kreikka
French: Grèce
FYROM: Грција / Grcija
German: Griechenland
Hungarian: Görögország
Icelandic: Grikkland
Irish: An Ghréig
Italian: Grecia
Japanese: ギリシャ (Girisha)
Korean: 그리스 (Geuriseu)
Latvian: Grieķija
Lithuanian: Graikija
Maltese: Greċja
Marathi: ग्रीस (Grīs)
Norwegian: Grekenland (alternative name, rarely used.)
Polish: Grecja
Portuguese: Grécia
Romanian: Grecia
Russian: Греция (Gretsiya)
Serbian: Грчка / Grčka
Slovak: Grécko
Slovene: Grčija
Spanish: Grecia
Swedish: Grekland
Ukrainian: Греція (Hretsiya)
Welsh: Groeg
West Frisian: Grikelân
Arabic: اليونان (al-Yūnān)
Aramaic: ܝܘܢ or יון (Yawān, Yawon)
Armenian: Հունաստան (Hunastan)
Old Armenian: Յունաստան (Yunastan)
Azeri: Yunanıstan
Bengali:Jubonan/Jobonan
Hindi: यूनान (Yūnān)
Hebrew (Biblical): יָוָן (Yāwān)
KJV Bible: Javan
Hebrew (Modern): יוון (Yavan)
Indonesian: Yunani
Kurdish: Yewnanistan
Laz: Yonaneti-Xorumona (ხორუმონა)
Nepalese: यूनान (Yūnān)
Pashto: یونان (Yūnān)
Persian: یونان (Yūnān)
Sanskrit: यवन (Yavana)
Tajik: Юнон (Yunon)
Turkish: Yunanistan
Urdu: یونان (Yūnān)
Uzbek: Yunoniston
Greek: Hellas or Hellada
Italian: Ellade (rare usage)
Norwegian (both Nynorsk and Bokmål): Hellas
Vietnamese: Hy Lạp
Chinese: 希臘 / 希腊 (pinyin: Xīlà; Jyutping: hei1 laap6)