Geographical name changes in Greece

[3][4] The aim of the name changes was to cover the memory of the "dark past": meaning Roman, Frankish, Venetian, and especially Turkish rule.

They occurred in the Arvanite settlements in central Greece since 1830, in Thessaly since 1881, after the Balkan Wars in Macedonia since 1913, and Western Thrace since 1920.

In contrast, the changes in the north were made "top-down" with a team of historians, folklorists, and archaeologists and archaising names foreign to the inhabitants were introduced.

[2] By covering the "dark past" and recalling classical Greece the new names were selected to align historical consciousness with the national narrative.

To this day, the use of the old Albanian, Slavic, or Turkish place names by authorities, organisations, and individuals is penalised under Greek law.

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).

By 1928, Greece's demography had drastically changed from the position in 1830: the country had turned into a nation-state, non-Greeks and most of the population spoke Greek.

[19] Eastern Central Greece was home to the Arvanites, an Albanian speaking people who migrated to the area in the 14th century.

An unknown number of Aromanians and Orthodox Albanians, in some sources called Arvanites, still live in the area, who today identify mostly as Greek.

[23] Till 1912, the area had a very heterogeneous population consisting of Slavic, Turkish, Greek, Jews and Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians.