Georgios N. Hatzidakis (12.11.1848–26.6.1941) was the greatest linguist, and one of the greatest scholars of Modern Greece. Honoured by a large number of domestic and foreign institutions, he has been given distinctions also by three Hungarian establishments. In 1900 he was elected External Fellow of the Academy of Sciences and Honorary Member of the Budapest Philological Society. In 1935 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Budapest University.

The unusual series of gestures Hatzidakis enjoyed calls for an investigation in order to understand the motives and the distinguished respect he and his country were confronted with in pre-war Hungary. It appears that it was the classicists who took an interest in his work rather than the linguists proper. Accordingly, the information for the following overview has been drawn mainly from philological sources, and from research in archives in Thessaloniki, Athens, Heraklion (Crete), and Budapest.

As his work and life-span show Hatzidakis is to be considered a traditionalist whose contributions ran largely parallel to what is called in our days Classical Studies. With regard to linguistics, although the revolutionary turn from the historical or diachronic dimension to the synchronic one began with Saussure a few decades before Hatzidakis' death, the change we see today was not felt at that time in Greek Linguistics either in Greece or in Hungary. Certainly, the exceptionally rich body of Greek, and the respective cultural tradition did not predict a linguistic breakthrough, and, at least in the view of the present writer, do not require one even today.