Top 10 similar words or synonyms for doukas

palaiologos    0.854081

kantakouzenos    0.852104

alexios    0.849779

laskaris    0.838801

nikephoros    0.830148

komnenos    0.817537

andronikos    0.814727

vatatzes    0.810267

niketas    0.791140

lekapenos    0.787723

Top 30 analogous words or synonyms for doukas

Article Example
Doukas The continuity of descent amongst the various branches of the original, middle Byzantine family is not clear, and historians generally recognize several distinct groups of Doukai based on their occurrence in the contemporary sources. According to Demetrios I. Polemis, who compiled the only overview work on the bearers of the Doukas name, in view of this lack of genealogical continuity "it would be a mistake to view the groups of people designated by the "cognomen" of Doukas as forming one large family".
Doukas Doukas, Latinized as Ducas (; feminine: Doukaina/Ducaena, Δούκαινα; plural: Doukai/Ducae, Δοῦκαι), from the Latin tile "dux" ("leader", "general", Hellenized as ["ðoux"]), is the name of a Byzantine Greek noble family, whose branches provided several notable generals and rulers to the Byzantine Empire in the 9th–11th centuries. A maternally-descended line, the Komnenodoukai, founded the Despotate of Epirus in the 13th century, with another branch ruling over Thessaly. After the 12th century, the name "Doukas" and other variants proliferated across the Byzantine world, and were sometimes presented as signifying a direct genealogical relationship with the original family or the later branch based in the Despotate of Epirus.
Doukas Nothing is known for certain about the family's origin. Later tradition, mentioned by the historian Nikephoros Bryennios, held that they descended from a cousin of the Roman emperor Constantine I who had migrated to Constantinople in the 4th century and allegedly became the city's governor with the title of "doux". This tradition is, however, evidently an invention meant to glorify the family, at the time the Empire's ruling dynasty, by 11th-century court chroniclers. In fact, it is more likely that the surname derives from the relatively common military rank of "doux". Nothing is known about the family's origin. Several authors have raised the possibility of an Armenian descent, but it is almost certain that the Doukai were in fact native-born Greek-speakers, probably from Paphlagonia in north-central Anatolia, where their estates were located.
Doukas The name spread far and wide across the Greek-speaking world as well as in Albania, and remains fairly common to this day. Among the more notable bearers of the Doukas name in the post-Byzantine period were the 16th-century Cretan scholar Demetrius Ducas, the 17th-century rulers of Moldavia George Ducas and Constantine Ducas (their descent is variously given as Greek, Vlach or Albanian) or the 19th-century scholar and educationalist Neophytos Doukas. Several variations also developed, such as Doukakes (Δουκάκης) (cf. former Massachusetts state governor Michael Dukakis), Doukopoulos (Δουκόπουλος), Doukatos (Δουκάτος), Makrodoukas or Makrydoukas (Μακροδούκας/Μακρυδούκας), etc. Other variants like Doukaites (Δουκαΐτης) or Doukides (Δουκίδης) seem to derive not from the surname, but from a locality and a first name "Doukas" respectively.
Doukas The first representative of the family appears in the mid-9th century, during the regency of Empress Theodora (r. 842–855), when he was sent to forcibly convert the Paulicians to Orthodoxy. He is only known as "the son of Doux", although Skylitzes interpolates the name of Andronikos, probably in confusion with Andronikos Doukas (see next). This name is also used by some modern sources, e.g. in the "Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit" (Andronikos #433).