How to Pronounce My Name...

First, take a deep breath. Ready?

My actual first name is Christoforos, i.e. Christopher in Greek. It means "the man who bears Christ" and, yes, it was my grandfather's name (no escaping of these traditions). Most people call me Christos. It is pronounced: 'hris-tos  ( "i" as i in Chris, "o" as aw in law). Watch out for the accent point. If you say  hris-'tos, you just called me Christ.

My family name ends in "-akis" (Kozyrakis) which identifies my origin from the island of Crete. It is pronounced: ko-zi-'ra-kis ("o" as aw in law, "i" as i in hit, "a" as a in map).

The Greek spelling is: Χρίστος Κοζυράκης. You need to turn on the Greek character encoding of your web browser to see this.