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The geographical name change in Greece was an initiative by the Greek government to replace non-Greek geographical and topographic names within the Greek Republic with Greek names as part of a policy and ideology of Hellenization. The main objective of the initiative has been to assimilate or hide geographical or topographical names that were deemed foreign and divisive against Greek unity or considered to be "bad Greek".〔 The names that were considered foreign were usually of Turkish, Albanian, and Slavic origin.〔 Most of the name changes occurred in the ethnically heterogeneous northern Greece and the Arvanite settlements in central Greece. Place names of Greek origin were also renamed after names in Classical Greece.〔 The policy commenced after the independence of Greece from the Ottoman Empire in the early 1830s, after the territorial expanses of Greece and continued into the Greek Republic.〔 To this day use of the old Turkish, Albanian, or Slavic placenames by authorities, organisations, and individuals is penalized under Greek law. ==History== The area that is today Greece was inhabited by various peoples throughout history, and the country's toponyms reflect their diversity of origins.〔 The hellenization of toponyms in Greece started soon after Greek independence, as part of the process of shaping Greek national identity. Many placenames in Greece of non-Greek origin were replaced by "ancient or pseudo ancient names that were supposed (sometimes erroneously) to have some connection to the area". For example, the ancient name of Piraeus was revived in the 19th century, after it had been called Drakos in Greek, Porto Leone in Venetian, and Aslan Limanı in Turkish for centuries, after the Piraeus Lion which stood there.〔Peter Mackridge, ''Language and National Identity in Greece, 1766-1976'', Oxford, 2009, p. 21〕 In 1909, the existence of large numbers of non Greek place names were a nuisance to the government. In 1909 the government-appointed commission on toponyms report that every one village in three in Greece (30% of the total) should have its name changed (of the 5,069 Greek villages, 1,500 were considered as “speaking a barbaric language”.〔 During the Balkan Wars, Greece doubled its territory and population, but it brought various large non-Greek populations into its border, especially in Macedonia and Epirus. Notably were the Slavic speaking Orthodox, the mostly Turkish-speaking Muslims from Macedonia, the Albanians and Aromanians in Epirus. After the war against Bulgaria in 1912 the majority of Slavic speaking Christians were also expelled from the country. After 1922, all Muslims except Western Thrace, were exchanged for all Orthodox in Turkey except for those in Istanbul. After World War II the remaining Muslim Albanians were expelled, the remaining Christian Albanian and Wallachians today proclaim themselves as Greeks. By 1928, Greece's demography had drastically changed from the position in 1830: the country had turned into a nation-state, non-Greeks had been removed, and most of the population spoke Greek and considered themselves to be by free will or pressure as "Greeks". Even the remaining Arvanites, Aromanians and the Orthodox Albanians in Epirus have conformed, as most members of these groups consider themselves Greeks today. As Greece transformed rapidly from a multi-ethnic to a mono-ethnic state〔Elisabeth Kontogiorgi, ''Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Forced Settlement of Refugees'', Oxford University Press, 2006, “The influx of Greek refugees coupled, with the departure of Muslims and pro-Bulgarian Slav Macedonians, produced a radical ethnological impact: whereas Macedonia was 42 per cent Greek in 1912, it was 89 per cent in 1926.”〕 the Greek government renamed many places with revived ancient names, local Greek-language names, or translations of the non-Greek names.〔Todor Hristov Simovski, ''The Inhabited Places of the Aegean Macedonia'' (Skopje 1998), ISBN 9989-9819-4-9, pp. XXXVIII-XLII.〕 The non-Greek names were officially removed.〔Bintliff, "The Ethnoarchaeology of a 'Passive' Ethnicity", in K.S. Brown and Yannis Hamilakis, ''The Usable Past: Greek Metahistories'', Lexington Books, 2003, p. 138 “This denial of the multiethnic composition of the rural landscape has been helped by state-imposed systematic place-name changes throughout this century, many as late as the 1960s, through which a wonderful scatter of traditional Greek, Slav, Albanian, and sometimes Italian village names has been suppressed—wherever conceivable—in favor of the name of any ancient Greek toponym remotely connected to the neighborhood.〕 Although the bulk of the population was Greek〔Anastasia Karakasidou's paper on "Politicizing Culture: Negating Ethnic Identity in Greek Macedonia", Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 11 (1993), 22-23 notes 2-3. "the bulk of the population in Greek Macedonia is nothing less than Greek"〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Recycling Propaganda: Remarks on Recent Reports on Greece's "Slav-Macedonian Minority"'' )〕〔Elisabeth Kontogiorgi, ''Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Forced Settlement of Refugees'', Oxford University Press, 2006, “The influx of Greek refugees coupled, with the departure of Muslims and pro-Bulgarian Slavs, produced a radical ethnological impact: whereas Macedonia was 42 per cent Greek in 1912, it was 89 per cent in 1926.”〕 the renaming was considered a way to establish a collective ethnic consciousness.〔Elisabeth Kontogiorgi, ''Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Forced Settlement of Refugees'', Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 292-294. “The policy of Hellenizing toponyms was fundamental to the more comprehensive process of establishing a collective ethnic consciousness and a sense of national identity rooted deeply in the profundity of time and history.”〕 A lot of historical Greek names from Asia Minor were also introduced in the region mainly by the resettled refugees. Many Demotic Greek names were also replaced by a Katharevousa Greek form, usually different only morphologically. This process started in 1926 and continued into the 1960s.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Geographical name changes in Greece」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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