What you are hearing is most likely the correct Greek pronunciation of Elláda (Ελλάδα). This is the modern Greek word for the name of their country, ultimately derived from the Ancient Greek Hellás (Ἑλλάς).
The English name for the country, "Greece", derives from the Latin name "Graecia". Wiktionary gives a fairly full etymology:
From Latin Graecia < Ancient Greek Γραικός (Graikos), a character in Greek mythology, the son of Thessalos, the king of Fthia, from whom Ἑλλάς (Hellas, “Greece”) and Ἕλληνες (Hellenes, “the Greeks”) got their names.
Although this entry explains the etymology of the name "Greece", it is admittedly slightly confusing about the etymology of "Hellas". This page gives a hypothetical etymology:
Etymology: From Ancient Greek (Hellas
"Greece"), from prefix - (el-ελ "sun,
bright, shiny", (elios, "sun")) +
(las-λας "rock, stone"). : "The land of
the sun and the rock".
I would not however want to comment on the veracity of this source. All that is known for sure is that Hellas originally referred to a small area within Ancient Greece and only later came to refer to all Greece. This Yahoo answer gives some handy details.
I've got a possible interpretation, for which however, I'm afraid there is actually little hard evidence (but considering the scarcity of etymology studies dealing with prostitution professional vocabulary, this is hardly surprising). However if you connect the dots, it kind of makes sense.
For each dot, in the conjecture below, I will add a confidence level (abbreviated as CL), so that hopefully other contributors might fill the gaps.
Here it goes anyway:
It all comes from... Surprise, surprise.... French argot (slung).
- "trique" in popular French is a word
for a wooden stick (CL 100%).
French donkey's are sometimes
motivated using "des coups de
trique". It is believed to come
from Northern French dialectal
"estrique" and is akin to "strike" in
English, "streik" in German and so
on. Also gives "tricoter" (to knit) in French.
- "avoir la trique" or "triquer" means
to have an erection (CL 100%).
Passing the boundary between popular
and argotic here.
- By extension "triquer" or "trequer"
means, for a man to make love, in a
careless/bestial way to his partner.
(CL 100%). Please refer to a
famous novel named "Prostitution"
by Pierre Guyotat, easy to find on
the web. Just Google for "Guyotat
triquer" and you should net a large
number of hits.
- The verb "triquer" used as "to have sex
with a prostitute" was particularly
common in the world of French
prostitution in the previous century
at least (CL 50%). Can't back this
from personal experience, I'm afraid
;-).
- The idiomatic expression passes in the English language somehow (CL 20%).
- A trick in English in the context of
prostitution has both the meaning of
a customer or the act itself. (CL 100%).
- To "turn tricks" is to engage in acts of prostitution with "Johns" or "Tricks".
So you see, this is a possibility but there are a few gaps which I'm not able to fill with certainty.
Edit
Since this post was composed (more than one year ago) and as I researched the world of the French Impressionists, I came across additional info concerning the step in which the expression passes into English.
It is a well documented fact that the French industrial revolution was accompanied as everywhere else, by rural exodus, poverty, and an increase in the levels of urban prostitution. It is also possible to show that a proportion of French prostitutes emigrated to the US and various other destinations (even Australia) at that time (end of the 19th Century). Conversely, one can find examples of "petits femmes de Paris" having risen to a certain level of fame and wealth in the US at the time.
In summary, the possibility that the expression passes into English now seems less conjectural to me.
Best Answer
Masochism is named after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, and you can get all of the filthy details at that link.