“Psacharopoulos”, a surname not of Peloponnesian origin, as one might initially assume, but possibly of Cretan origin. In the Peloponnese it is entirely unattested, and on Sifnos it does not appear in this form before the early 19th century.
The name appears for the first time in a renewal of a permit for passage and residence. Permit no. 433, issued on 03 July 1828, replaced permit no. 295 of 27 March 1820, so that Ioannis Psacharopoulos, son of Georgios, could travel on 01 December 1828 from Odessa to Moldavia for a meeting—possibly a conference of ship captains—and in March of the same year to Varna. From the same document we learn that he had visited Odessa again in 1821.
The surname also appears in the register of pupils of the Primary School of Sifnos in 1836, where the following are listed as students: Georgios, Konstantinos Nikolaos, and Apostolos Psacharopoulos, described as “sons of Ioannis, cook by profession.”
By contrast, on Sifnos, already from the 18th century, the variant Tzakaropoulos is attested (notably borne by an important Sifnian icon painter), which may later have been corrupted into “Psach–”. In the church of Saint George the Afentis, there exists an icon dated 1635, bearing a signature which, rendered into Modern Greek, could be read as follows:
By the hand of Zacharias Tzakaropoulos
Year: 1635 (ΑΧΛΕ), at the expense [or commemoration] of the servant of God Vasileios Logothetis
The name Tsangaros / Tsangarolos (Zancarol) appears in an important codex brought to light some years ago from the Historical Archive of Corfu by Professor Katerina Zaridi of the University of Ioannina: the codex containing the noble register of Cephalonia for the year 1799, the so-called Golden Book, or in Italian Libro d’Oro. She studied and published it under the title The “Libro d’Oro” of Cephalonia of the Year 1799.
This codex was compiled in 1799 by the Cephalonian historian Ioannis Kostis Loverdos (1767–1842), by order of the Russian Admiral Ushakov, in order to restore the Golden Book which had been burned amid popular acclamations in 1797 by the republican French of Napoleon, after expelling the Venetians from Cephalonia and the other Ionian Islands.
In this codex of the Cephalonian nobility, two names of particular interest to our family are mentioned:
• Aravantinos
“Mantalénides” or “Magdalinaioi” is a nickname of the well-known Aravantinos family. From this family came Mandeléni (Magdalene) Mantaléni, wife of Ioannis Psacharopoulos, son of Georgios.
• Tsangaroli (Tsangarolos – Zancarol)
The Zancarolo family (or variants such as Grancarolo, Zancaruol, Zancarol, etc.) was a noble Venetian house, originating from the region of Cesena.
One branch of this family settled and acquired feudal holdings in the region of Chania in Crete. During their passage through the Peloponnese in the period of the Second Venetian Rule (1699–1715), the Zancaroli may have acquired the patronymic ending –Zancaropouloi. In this case, a more distant derivation of the surname from the original Cretan-Venetian “Zan Carlo” cannot be ruled out.
A possible connection with the Cretan Zancaroli, a family also renowned for producing important icon painters, who spread throughout Greece after the fall of Candia (Heraklion), remains a subject for further research (as also noted by Manos Philippakis).
The specific coat of arms belongs to the hieromonk Jeremias–Ioannis Tsangarolos or to his brother Lavrentios–Loukas, who (together with other relatives) abandoned the Roman Catholic faith and converted to Greek Orthodoxy, rebuilding and successively administering the Monastery of the Holy Trinity at Akrotiri, Chania, which bears their name.
This coat of arms survives today as a roughly drawn sketch (graffito) on an interior wall of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior, in the village of Kefali, Kissamos, Crete (altitude 440 m). It is accompanied by the date 1612 and was first identified by scholars Dimitris Tsougarakis and Eleni Angelomati-Tsougaraki (see bibliography), who cautiously attribute it to the Venetian-Cretan feudal family of the Tsangaroli, one branch of which had abandoned Roman Catholicism and embraced Greek Orthodoxy.
Finally, according to Eugenios Rizos-Rangavis (1850–1941)—a Greek army officer and writer concerned with genealogy and heraldry—who states in his book Eugene Rizo Rangabè … Livre d’or de la noblesse Ionienne, Volume II, First Part A–I, Cephalonia (Athens, Eleftheroudakis Editions, 1926), page II (page 13 in the PDF pagination):
“From the above list the following eleven families are missing; some of them were raised to the nobility after 1 July 1604, while others are included in the list under different names, or belonged to the nobility of another island.”
Zancarol, belonging to the nobility of Candia (Crete), was never entered into the Golden Book of Cephalonia, where it is mentioned as foreign.
Therefore, the linguistic / phonological explanation proposed here appears reasonable: Italian-Latin orthography renders Greek “ts / tz” sounds with Z / Zn / Zc, and the suffix may shift over time. Thus, Zancarol ↔ Tsangaropoulos is a realistic transformation within the historical-linguistic context of the Ionian Islands and Venetian administration.
Moreover, the icon still preserved (as of 2026) in the church of Saint George the Afentis demonstrates at least the passage—if not the settlement—on Sifnos of a member of the Tsangarolos family originating from Candia, Crete.