Former toponyms of Greek places

Many settlements in Macedonia region in Northern Greece had Greek and non-Greek forms. Most of those names were in use during the multinational environment of the Ottoman Empire. Some of the forms were identifiably of Greek origin, others of Slavic, yet others of Turkish, Vlach and even Albanian origin. Following the First World War and the Graeco-Turkish War which followed, an exchange of population took place between Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Turkey (Treaty of Neuilly, between Greece and Bulgaria and Treaty of Lausanne, between Greece and Turkey). The villages of the exchanged populations (Bulgarians and Muslims) in Greece were resettled with Greeks from Asia Minor, and the Balkans (mainly from Bulgaria and Yugoslavia).

Since Greece transformed rapidly from a multi-ethnic to a mono-ethnic state [Elisabeth Kontogiorgi, "Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Forced Settlement of Refugees", Oxford University Press, 2006, “The influx of Greek refugees coupled, with the departure of Muslims and pro-Bulgarian Slav Macedonians, produced a radical ethnological impact: whereas Macedonia was 42 per cent Greek in 1912, it was 89 per cent in 1926.”] the Greek government renamed many places with revived ancient names, local Greek-language names, or translations of the non-Greek names. [Todor Hristov Simovski, "The Inhabited Places of the Aegean Macedonia" (Skopje 1998), ISBN 9989-9819-4-9, pp. XXXVIII-XLII.] The multi-ethnic names were officially removed and the former multi-ethnic composition of the region was almost denied.Bintliff, "The Ethnoarchaeology of a 'Passive' Ethnicity", in K.S. Brown and Yannis Hamilakis, "The Usable Past: Greek Metahistories", Lexington Books, 2003, p. 138 “This denial of the multiethnic composition of the rural landscape has been helped by state-imposed systematic place-name changes throughout this century, many as late as the 1960s, through which a wonderful scatter of traditional Greek, Slav, Albanian, and sometimes Italian village names has been suppressed—wherever conceivable—in favor of the name of any ancient Greek toponym remotely connected to the neighborhood.] Although the bulk of the population was Greek [Anastasia Karakasidou's paper on "Politicizing Culture: Negating Ethnic Identity in Greek Macedonia", Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 11 (1993), 22-23 notes 2-3. "the bulk of the population in Greek Macedonia is nothing less than Greek"] [cite web |url=http://www.unix.gr/Macedonia/Vlasidis.htm |title=Recycling Propaganda: Remarks on Recent Reports on Greece's "Slav-Macedonian Minority" |author=Vlassis Vlasidis - Veniamin Karakostanoglou ] [Elisabeth Kontogiorgi, "Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Forced Settlement of Refugees", Oxford University Press, 2006, “The influx of Greek refugees coupled, with the departure of Muslims and pro-Bulgarian Slav Macedonians, produced a radical ethnological impact: whereas Macedonia was 42 per cent Greek in 1912, it was 89 per cent in 1926.”] the renaming was considered a way to establish a collective ethnic consciousness. [Elisabeth Kontogiorgi, "Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Forced Settlement of Refugees", Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 292-294. “The policy of Hellenizing toponyms was fundamental to the more comprehensive process of establishing a collective ethnic consciousness and a sense of national identity rooted deeply in the profundity of time and history.”] A lot of historical Greek names from Asia Minor were also introduced in the region mainly by the resettled refugees. Many Demotic Greek names were also replaced by a Katharevousa Greek form, usually different only morphologically. This process started in 1926 and continued into the 1960s..

The toponyms are divided by Greek prefecture:
*Former toponyms of places in Drama Prefecture
*Former toponyms of places in Grevena Prefecture
*Former toponyms of places in Imathia Prefecture
*Former toponyms of places in Kavala Prefecture
*Former toponyms of places in Pella Prefecture
*Former toponyms of places in Pieria Prefecture
*Former toponyms of places in Xanthi Prefecture

References