Neo Monastiri

Our trusted friend Wikipedia tells us that prior to 1927 the name of the modern village of Neo Monastiri was Τσιόμπα (Tsioba). This name appears to be the Turkish, based on the word çoban (Felipe Rojas, email correspondence, 2018) meaning shepherd, which is a fairly common component of Turkish place names. This name is also linked to a popular Turkish producer of Greek yogurt, Chobani.

In 1927 there was a deliberate name change to Neo Monastiri. Where things get a little foggy is the progression of names prior to this change. The use and existence of Tsioba is documented below, but another name is noted in this source: Biclerer (Μπικλερέρ), also Turkish. There is also mention of the village being called Malamidohori in honor of the Fthiotida representative Efstathios Malamidas, who founded the village, though this name didn’t stick (1925). One reference was found to the toponym Hajoba as the name of the village prior to the arrival of the Bulgarian immigrants. As we know, the village was rebuilt after a 1955 earthquake, and now the former location is referred to as the “old village” (Paliohori). The toponym Neo Monastiri was directly transferred between places.

Figure 1. A map from *The Wars of the Nineties*, courtesy of the Anne SK Brown Military Collection at the John Hay Library.

The oldest known reference to a village toponym is from an 1897 map (figure 1) in the book The Wars of the Nineties, published in 1899 in London. This map shows the town of Tsioba in the correct location for Neo Monastiri based on comparison with the surrounding towns. From this, it’s obvious that there was a small village, as it was described in sources contemporary to the map, at the location prior to the establishment of the current community living there. One source writes that that itinerant shepherds or vlachs lived in the village for fifty years prior to their own arrival . There is a note that these names applied to older ‘settlements’, not villages, although no distinction is made between what that means, exactly. There’s no record of a Greek toponym in use prior to 1927, which is interesting given the array of possible Turkish names used prior to this time. Continue reading “Toponyms at Koutroulou Magoula” →