Origin of the Greek Tribes. Modern historians offer various ideas on the origin of the Greek tribes and about their entry into the area. The popular view of successive “invasions” by northern tribes is largely based on Greek myths and archaeological conjecture. Actually, secular history concerning Greece does not begin until about the eighth century B.C.E. (the first Olympiad being celebrated in 776 B.C.E.), and a connected record is possible only from the fifth century B.C.E. onward. This was many centuries after the Flood and hence long after the dispersal of families because of the confusion of mankind’s language at Babel. (Ge 11:1-9) During these many centuries other groups perhaps infiltrated the original stock of Javan and his sons, but for the period prior to the first millennium B.C.E., there are only theories of doubtful value.

Principal Greek tribes. Among the principal tribes found in Greece were the Achaeans of Thessaly, the central Peloponnesus, and Boeotia; the Aeolians in E central Greece and the NW part of Asia Minor called Aeolia, and the nearby islands; the Dorians of the eastern Peloponnesus, the southern islands of the Aegean, and the SW part of Asia Minor; and the Ionians of Attica, the island of Euboea, the islands of the middle Aegean, and the W coasts of Asia Minor. However, any relationship between these tribes and the Macedonians in the earlier periods is uncertain.

These names come from Grai·koiʹ, the name of a tribe in NW Greece. The Italians applied the name (Lat., Graeci) to the inhabitants of Greece as a whole. Eventually even Aristotle in his writings used the term in a similar way.

Another earlier name, Ionians, appears from the eighth century B.C.E. onward in Assyrian cuneiform records, as well as in Persian and Egyptian accounts. This name comes from that of Javan (Heb., Ya·wanʹ), son of Japheth and grandson of Noah. Javan was the Japhetic ancestor of the early peoples of Greece and the surrounding islands, as well as, evidently, of the early inhabitants of Cyprus, parts of southern Italy, Sicily, and Spain.​—Ge 10:1, 2, 4, 5; 1Ch 1:4, 5, 7; see ELISHAH; JAVAN; KITTIM.

While “Ionian” now applies geographically to the sea between southern Italy and southern Greece, including the chain of islands along the W coast of Greece, the name once had a broader application more in harmony with the Hebrew Scriptures’ use of “Javan.” The prophet Isaiah, in the eighth century B.C.E., spoke of the time when the returned exiles of Judah would be sent to distant nations, including “Tubal and Javan, the faraway islands.”​—Isa 66:19.

In the Christian Greek Scriptures, the land is called Hel·lasʹ (“Greece,” Ac 20:2), and the people, Helʹle·nes. The Greeks themselves had used these names beginning several centuries before the Common Era and continue to do so. “Hellas” may have some connection with “Elishah,” one of Javan’s sons. (Ge 10:4)