In Ancient Greek, the adjective Ionios (Ἰόνιος) was used as an epithet for the sea between Epirus and Italy in which the Ionian Islands are found, because, according to myth, Io swam across it.

Kerkyra was known as Corfù, Ithaki as Val di Compare, Kythera as Cerigo, Lefkada as Santa Maura and Zakynthos as Zante.

Kefallonia is often spelled as Cephallenia or Cephalonia, Ithaki as Ithaca, Kerkyra as Corcyra, Kythera as Cythera, Lefkada as Leucas or Leucada and Zakynthos as Zacynthus.

The one exception was the conflict between Kerkyra and its mother-city Corinth in 434 BC, which brought intervention from Athens and triggered the Peloponnesian War.

Ithaca was the name of the island home of Odysseus in the epic Ancient Greek poem the Odyssey by Homer.

Some remained under the control of the Macedonian Kingdom until 146 BC, when the Greek peninsula was gradually annexed by Rome.

The islands were a frequent target of Saracen raids and from the late 11th century, saw a number of Norman and Italian attacks.

From 1204, the Republic of Venice controlled Corfu and slowly all the Ionian islands fell under Venetian rule.

During this time, large numbers of Greeks moved to the Ionian islands to escape Ottoman persecution.

Smaller numbers of Albanian, Aromanian and Slavic-speaking Christians also fled to the islands, though they quickly assimilated into the Greek majority.

This was bolstered by the arrival of thousands of settlers from other parts of the Venetian Republic, forming the basis of the Corfiot Italian community.

In 1798–1799 a Russian-Ottoman fleet under the command of the Russian Admiral Ushakov evicted the French; the victors established the Septinsular Republic of 1800–1807 under joint Russo-Ottoman protection—the first time Greeks had had even limited self-government since the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

However, in 1862, Otto was deposed in a coup by the Great National Assembly and a new king, George I from Denmark, was elected in his place.

[citation needed] In 1862, Britain decided to transfer the islands to Greece, as a gesture of support intended to bolster the new King's popularity (probably as a counterbalance to the newly established Italian state).

In 1941, when Axis forces occupied Greece, the Ionian Islands (except Kythera) were handed over to the Italians.

The 1953 Ionian islands earthquake occurred with a surface wave magnitude of 7.2 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme) on August 12, 1953.

In recent decades, the islands have lost much of their population through emigration and the decline of their traditional industries, fishing and marginal agriculture.

Specifically Kerkyra, with its harbour, scenery and wealth of ruins and castles, is a favourite stopping place for cruise liners.

British tourists in particular are attracted through having read Gerald Durrell's evocative book My Family and Other Animals (1956), which describes his childhood on Kerkyra in the 1930s.