The city was originally built next to the marches of Lake Achinos, on the hill of "Toumba" (2 km south of Nea Zichni)[3] and it was called Ichna (Greek: Ίχνα).

It was a Paionian city, that was sometime in the 5th or early 4th century BC incorporated into the Macedonian Kingdom.

Another city by the same name Ichna is mentioned by Thucydides being next to Pella, by the estuary of the Loudias and Axios rivers.

The name Ichna is a Paionian cognate of the Greek word "ichnos" (Greek: ίχνος) which means "stepping ground" a name appropriate for a city built on the sand between the marsh and the lake (or the sea).

[6] In the 19th century it was a kaza centre in the Sanjak of Serres in the Salonica Eyalet.