Greek diaspora

The Greek diaspora or Hellenic diaspora, also known as Omogenia (Greek: Ομογένεια) refers to the communities of Greek people living outside the traditional Greek homelands, but more commonly in other parts of the Balkans, in southern Russia and Ukraine, Asia Minor, the region of Pontus (Pontic Greeks), as well as Eastern Anatolia and neighbouring Georgia and the South Caucasus (see Caucasus Greeks, Greeks in Russia, and Greeks in Georgia). Members of the diaspora can be identified as those who themselves, or whose ancestors, migrated from the Greek homelands.

The Greek diaspora is one of the oldest and historically most significant in the world, with an almost unbroken presence from Homeric times to present. Examples of its influence range from the instrumental role played by Greek expatriates in the emergence of the Renaissance, various liberational and nationalist movements implicated in the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, to commercial developments like the commissioning of the worlds first supertankers by shipping magnates Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos.