Family name origins & meanings
- Greek : from a short form of the personal name Hippolytos (composed of the elements hippos ‘horse’ + luein ‘loose’). This was the name of various minor early Christian saints as well as a figure in classical mythology (a young man who rejected the incestuous advances of his stepmother Phaedra).
- Greek : shortened form of medieval Greek Konstantinopolitēs, a habitational name for someone from Constantinople. Greek politēs literally means ‘citizen’, ‘city dweller’; in the Levant the city in question was assumed (in the absence of any other specification) to be Constantinople.