"Τα φανάρια ελέγχουν την κίνηση."
Translation:The traffic signals control the traffic.
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I was wondering the same thing. I was also wondering what the Greek section of Ottoman Istanbul, where the Phanariotes came from, might have to do with traffic lights.
If I'm not wrong, there was a tower with a light or some king of lighthouse. There should also have gardens or vegetable gardens, so the Turks named it "Fenerbahçe" (where fener = fanar(i) )
JamesT.Wilson! This district of Constantinople/ Κωνσταντινούπολη was named Φανάρι/ Phanari after the φανάρι/ lighthouse on the bridge of the harbour.
if you think of the word cinema, the German is closer with kino.., from the original moving pictures it became cinema. Also words like kinetics etc.
κινηματογράφος "cinematograph" was the original word, I believe - a "movement writer", from κίνημα "a movement".
This was then abbreviated to "cinema" and "Kino" in various languages.
(And subsequently reborrowed into Greek as σινεμά.)
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Better been την κίνηση των αυτοκινήτωνg. A synonym word in this very case is κυκλοφορία, as it corresponds to traffic. Κίνηση is a term of Physics too, corresponding to motion.
Κίνηση indeed means motion as well, but it's also the most common word for referring to traffic. There is no need to say "κίνηση των αυτοκινήτων", except in formal speech, in fact it might sound excessive in certain cases of everyday use, e.g. in phrases like "κόλλησα στην κίνηση", "έχει πολλή κίνηση" etc.
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In Spanish, "traffic light" is "semáforo", from σήμα and -φόρος (literally, that which carries signals. Nice!). Interesting that in Spanish the word is derived from Greek but in Greek it's completely different
