B4. NAME CHANGES OF SETTLEMENTS IN GREECE - Pandektis
(Dimitris Dimitropoulos)
The Department of Neohellenic Research, recognizing the importance of study of toponyms (place names) in Greek history, has included in its research activities the study of names of settlements and lesser place names, in the framework of its Research Program ''Historical study of settlements in Greece (15th-20th centuries)".
A product of the above program is the current database, "Name Changes of Settlements in Greece'', which aims at recording the name changes effected through official administrative acts.
For the time being, the database covers the acts recorded between 1913-1962, a period during which the practice of changing the names of settlements and communities became more frequent, due to the admission of new territories into the Greek state, and to administrative rearrangements at the local level.
4.075 instances of renaming have been recorded so far, distributed geographically as follows: Macedonia 1.759, Peloponnese 750, Sterea Hellas 474, Thessaly 443, Ipeiros 390, Thrace 92, Crete 77, Aegean Islands 58, Ionian Islands 32. In separate fields of the database are recorded the prefecture, the province, the municipality or the community to which the settlement belongs, the code of the settlement, its name at the time of its renaming and the new name that it received, any variations of the old or the new name, the date of the official renaming act and the Official Journal in which it was published.
Leonidas Kallivretakis is the Research Director of the Program, Dimitris Dimitropoulos had the scientific oversight of the current project, while Katerina Dede assured the systematic documentation, organization, verification and updating of the material, as well as the final editing of the database. Eleni Kyramargiou collaborated also in the final stages of the project.
The database will be updated annually, until the recording of all renamed Greek settlements is completed.
