The Makris surname is Greek, and it started life as a plain physical description. It comes from makros, meaning “long” or “tall”, and it singled out one man in a village where everybody already knew everybody else.
What Does the Surname Makris Mean?
Makris (Greek: Μακρής) means “tall” or “long”, from the Greek adjective makros (μακρός). It is a descriptive surname rather than a patronymic or an occupational one, so it records nothing about a father, a trade or a birthplace. It records a body.
Somebody in your line was taller than the people around him, the village said so often enough that the comment became a label, and the label outlived him by centuries.
Greek is rich in this kind of name. Kontos is “short”, Mavros is “dark”, Xanthos is “fair”, Psaros is “grizzled”. Makris sits squarely among them, and it is one of the commonest surnames in the Greek-speaking world.
The adjective also survives inside compound names. The soldier and memoirist Yannis Makriyannis, one of the great voices of the Greek War of Independence, was in effect “long John”: makrys welded onto Yannis, exactly the kind of tag a fighting band would give a man and exactly the kind that hardens into a surname.
Where the Makris Name Comes From
Makris comes from the Greek-speaking world as a whole rather than from a single region. It is found across the Greek mainland, the islands, Cyprus, and the old Greek communities of Asia Minor and the Black Sea coast, because the thing it describes was never local to anywhere.
From byname to hereditary surname
Greeks did not carry fixed family names for most of their history. Through the Byzantine centuries a person was identified by a given name plus something else: a father’s name, a village, a job, or a nickname. Documents from roughly the tenth century onward show these second names being used more and more consistently, and gradually being passed down.
Under Ottoman rule the process hardened, because tax registers, church books and property records all needed a stable way to tell one Georgios from another. When the modern Greek state introduced civil registration in the nineteenth century, it largely froze whatever each family was already being called. Many Greek surnames therefore date, in their fixed written form, only to that moment, even though the nickname behind them is far older.
There is no Makris clan
This matters, and it disappoints people. Greek surnames have no equivalent of the Irish sept or the Scottish clan. Because Makris arose from an ordinary adjective, it arose independently in dozens of unconnected places, whenever a tall man needed distinguishing from a short one.
Two Makris families from different villages are, in all likelihood, entirely unrelated. Shared descent has to be proved from records, village by village, not assumed from the name.
What the suffix tells you
Bare Makris carries no regional signal. The suffixed forms do. Makridis points towards Pontus and Asia Minor, Makrakis and Makridakis towards Crete, Makropoulos towards the Peloponnese. Our page on the Papadopoulos surname sets out that suffix map in full, and it is the single most useful thing a Greek researcher can learn.
Spelling Variants and Related Names
The main variants are Makri, Makridis, Makrides, Makridakis, Makrakis and Makropoulos, plus the English transcriptions Macris, Makres, Mackris and Macrides. All share the same makr- root.
The suffixed forms are worth separating out, because each one is a small geographical clue:
- Makridis / Makrides / Macrides / Macridis (Μακρίδης) is the patronymic “son of Makris”, and the ending is characteristic of Pontic and Asia Minor Greeks, and of Cyprus, where Makrides is a familiar form.
- Makrakis and Makridakis carry the Cretan diminutive ending.
- Makropoulos (Μακρόπουλος) is “son of the tall one”, with the Peloponnesian ending. Its female form is Makropoulou.
Then there is Makri, which causes more confusion among American researchers than any other point in Greek genealogy. Greek surnames are inflected, and a woman traditionally takes the genitive of her father’s or husband’s name. Makris becomes Makri. Papadopoulos becomes Papadopoulou. Makridis becomes Makridou.
So a Greek church register listing Maria Makri and Georgios Makris is not describing two families. It is describing one, and it is telling you that Maria belongs to Makris. Researchers who search only the masculine spelling routinely lose half their female ancestors.
American records added their own layer. Clerks and census takers wrote what they heard, so the same man surfaces as Makris, Macris, Makres and Mackris across four documents, and some families shortened further on the shop sign if not on the paperwork.
The Makrises in America
Most American Makris families descend from the great Greek emigration between roughly 1890 and 1924. Around 450,000 Greeks reached the United States between 1890 and 1917, with a further 70,000 arriving before the immigration quota acts of 1921 and 1924 closed the door almost completely.
They were overwhelmingly young men from rural villages, sent to earn and expected to return. Many did. Many more sent for a bride or a brother instead, and the chain kept pulling.
The work came first and the community came after. Greek labourers went into the textile mills, where the Greek community in Lowell, Massachusetts became one of the largest in the country, into the mines and railroad gangs of the West, and into the sponge boats of Tarpon Springs, Florida, where divers recruited from the Dodecanese built a Greek town that is still Greek.
Then came the food. Greeks moved into the restaurant trade from about 1900, first feeding their own countrymen, then discovering that a lunch counter needed little capital, no English worth speaking of, and every hour a family could give it. By 1919 roughly a third of Chicago’s restaurants were run by Greeks, which is why Greektown in Chicago grew where it did. The American diner, in much of the north east and midwest, is a Greek institution wearing an American name.
The institutions followed the money. The first Greek Orthodox parish in the United States was founded at New Orleans in 1864, and by 1918 around 130 Orthodox churches were operating nationally, each one anchoring a neighbourhood the way Greektown in Baltimore was anchored. In 1922, in response to open nativist hostility, Greek Americans founded AHEPA, the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, to defend the community and to argue its case in English.
A second wave arrived after the 1965 reform of American immigration law, and it landed somewhere quite specific. Astoria, Queens became the densest Greek settlement outside Greece itself, and a Makris who reached New York in 1968 had a very different America to work with than one who reached Lowell in 1908.
In the 2010 US Census, 91.54 per cent of people named Makris identified themselves as white, with 3.41 per cent identifying as Black, 2.69 per cent as Hispanic and 1.57 per cent as two or more races. Those are self-identification proportions recorded on a single form in a single year, not a measure of ancestry, and they show a name whose American bearers still cluster tightly around one origin story. Compare the pattern with the far larger Pappas surname, the priest’s name that became the most recognisably Greek surname in America.
Notable People Named Makris
Dimitrios Makris (c. 1772 to 1841) was a klepht and armatolos from Gavalou in Aetolia-Acarnania, and one of the most powerful chieftains in western central Greece. He joined the Filiki Eteria on the eve of the 1821 revolution, was made a general in 1823, and fought through the third siege of Missolonghi. After independence he went home and declined every honour offered to him.
Orestis Makris (1898 to 1975) was a Greek actor and tenor, one of the defining faces of twentieth century Greek stage and cinema.
Memos Makris (1913 to 1993) was a Greek sculptor whose work is held in public collections in Greece and central Europe.
Andreas Makris (1930 to 2005) was a Greek American composer, long associated with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington.
Constantine Makris is a Greek American cinematographer, television director and producer, a fixture of American network drama.
Ruth Macrides (1949 to 2019), carrying the variant spelling, was a leading scholar of Byzantine history and one of the finest editors of Byzantine legal and court texts of her generation.
How Common Is Makris Today?
Makris is a moderately common surname in the United States, ranked 18,242nd in the 2010 US Census with 1,524 bearers. In Greece and Cyprus it is far commoner, sitting among the most frequent surnames in the language.
| US rank (2010 Census) | #18,242 |
|---|---|
| Americans with the name | 1,524 |
| Origin | Greek |
| Meaning | “Tall” or “long”, from Greek makros |
The American figure understates the family, because it counts only the exact spelling. Add Macris, Makres, Mackris, Makridis, Makrides and Makropoulos and the true number of American descendants of a tall Greek ancestor is several times higher.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the surname Makris mean?
Makris means “tall” or “long” in Greek, from the adjective makros (μακρός). It is a descriptive nickname surname, given to a man noticeably taller than his neighbours, which later became hereditary.
Is Makris Greek or Italian?
Makris is Greek. The confusion arises because the name appears in Italian-influenced records from Venetian-ruled islands such as Crete and the Ionians, and because Italian has its own similar-looking names. The root is unambiguously the Greek makros.
Where does the Makris family come from?
There is no single Makris homeland. The name arose independently across the Greek-speaking world, from the mainland and islands to Cyprus and Asia Minor. Suffixed forms narrow it down: Makridis suggests Pontus or Asia Minor, Makrakis suggests Crete, Makropoulos suggests the Peloponnese.
How common is the surname Makris?
In the United States, Makris ranked 18,242nd in the 2010 Census with 1,524 bearers. In Greece and Cyprus it is one of the more common surnames, and counting the variant spellings raises the American total considerably.
Is there a Makris family crest or coat of arms?
No. In European heraldic tradition arms are granted to an individual and pass to that person’s direct descendants, never to everyone who happens to share a surname. Greece had no such system at all under Ottoman rule. Any website selling you a “Makris family crest” is selling a decoration, not a lineage.
Why is my Greek grandmother’s surname Makri and not Makris?
Because Greek surnames are inflected. A woman traditionally takes the genitive form of her father’s or husband’s surname, so Makris becomes Makri, just as Papadopoulos becomes Papadopoulou. Maria Makri and Georgios Makris are the same family, and searching only the masculine spelling will hide your female ancestors.
If your family carries the Makris name, its route from Greece to America is traceable. Atlas of Home can follow it from the village that first called a man tall to wherever your family landed, and to wherever you are now.
Further reading: the Makris surname entry and the overview of Greek Americans on Wikipedia.