The village was officially renamed on December 29, 1953,[2][3] in keeping with a broader program of Hellenization of geographical names in Greece.

[4] Merbaka is thought to have been named for William of Moerbeke, a 13th-century Roman Catholic archbishop of Corinth, scholar and Philhellene from Flanders.

A roughly contemporaneous Byzantine-Gothic Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God (Greek: Ναός της Κοίμησις Θεοτόκου, popularly known as Παναγία της Βούζης, Panagia tis Bouzis, "Our Lady of Bouzis") in the village may have been built under his auspices.

[5] From the end of the Sixth Ottoman-Venetian War to 1770, when it was attacked by bandits, Merbaka was the seat of the Orthodox Metropolis of Nauplion and Argolis, due to the Venetian imposition of a Latin bishop at Argos.

Before the Kapodistrias plan, and the Kallikratis Programme, the village was part of the Nafplia Province in the nome (prefecture) of Argolis, in the geographic region of the Peloponnese.