Thessaloniki was named for the half-sister of Alexander the Great. Alexandroupoli received its present name only in the 20th century. Athens, meanwhile, is traditionally linked to the goddess Athena, although the true origin of its name is far less certain.
Across Greece, city names have survived from antiquity, been reshaped under foreign rule, or emerged from legends that became inseparable from the places themselves.
Here are the stories behind the names of 12 Greek cities.
Athens
According to one of the best-known stories in Greek mythology, Athens took its name after Athena defeated Poseidon in a contest to become the city’s patron deity.
Poseidon struck the ground with his trident, producing a spring, while Athena offered the inhabitants an olive tree. Athena’s gift was chosen and the city took her name.
The linguistic history is less straightforward.
The ancient name of Athens, Athēnai, is probably pre-Greek in origin. Modern scholars have argued that the relationship may actually run in the opposite direction to the myth, with the goddess Athena taking her name from the city rather than the city being named after the goddess.
Whatever its linguistic origin, the ancient story of Athena and Poseidon became central to Athenian identity, and the olive tree remained one of Athena’s most important symbols.
Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki was named after a woman whose own name commemorated a military victory.
The Macedonian king Cassander founded the city in about 315 BC on or near the older settlement of Therma and named it after his wife, Thessalonike of Macedon.
She was the daughter of Philip II and the half-sister of Alexander the Great.
Her name combines Thessaly with the Greek word nike, meaning victory, and is generally understood as “victory in Thessaly”, commemorating one of Philip II’s military successes in the region.
A name first given to a Macedonian princess more than 2,300 years ago therefore survives in Greece’s second-largest city.
Patras
The name Patras also comes with an ancient foundation story.
Pausanias wrote that after the Achaeans displaced the Ionians from the area, Patreus, son of Preugenes, enlarged the settlement of Aroe and incorporated neighbouring communities into it.
He then named the new city Patrae after himself.
Ancient Patrae stood on the site of the modern city and later developed into an important Roman centre and port.
The plural form, Patrai, was used in antiquity before eventually becoming the modern Greek Patra.
Piraeus
Piraeus was once physically more separate from Athens than it appears today, and its name may preserve that geography.
According to the Municipality of Piraeus, one explanation traces Peiraieus to peraieus, a ferryman or person who carries others across water. Another connects it with peran, meaning “beyond”, reflecting the fact that the area was once separated from the Attic mainland and appeared to lie beyond the opposite shore.
The landscape gradually changed as sediment filled the low-lying ground between Piraeus and the rest of Attica.
By the fifth century BC, Themistocles had recognised the strategic value of its natural harbours and Piraeus developed into the great maritime gateway of ancient Athens.
Nafplio
According to Greek mythology, Nafplio was named for its founder, Nauplius, a son of Poseidon and Amymone.
The legend holds that Nauplius established and fortified the city, while his son Palamedes gave his name to Palamidi, the imposing hill and fortress that overlooks modern Nafplio.
The city’s name has appeared in several forms across its long history, including Nauplion and Anapli.
Nafplio later passed through Byzantine, Frankish, Venetian and Ottoman hands before becoming the first capital of the modern Greek state following the War of Independence.
Sparta
Ancient tradition gave Sparta a female namesake.
According to the story recorded by ancient sources, Lacedaemon, the son of Zeus and the nymph Taygete, became king of the region and married Sparta, daughter of the river god Eurotas.
He called the wider territory Lacedaemon after himself and the city Sparta after his wife.
Both names survived in antiquity. The inhabitants were commonly known as Lacedaemonians, while Sparta became the name most readily associated with the formidable city-state that dominated much of the Peloponnese during periods of ancient Greek history.
Corinth
The origin of Corinth’s name is less certain.
Ancient Corinthians had their own explanation. According to a tradition recorded in ancient sources, Corinthus, the figure from whom the city supposedly took its name, was said by the Corinthians to have been a son of Zeus.
Linguists, however, generally regard Korinthos as an extremely old name that may predate the Greek language in the region. The ending found in Korinthos appears in a number of place names believed to come from Greece’s pre-Greek linguistic past.
Before Corinth, the settlement was also associated with the ancient name Ephyra.
The result is a name familiar for almost three millennia whose precise beginnings remain unresolved.
Larissa
Larissa may be older still.
Unlike cities named for historical rulers or mythological founders, Larissa appears to preserve a name from the linguistic world that existed in Greece before Greek became dominant.
The word has traditionally been described as Pelasgian and interpreted as meaning a fortress or fortified place. Similar place names existed elsewhere in Greece and Asia Minor.
Modern scholarship is more cautious. While the form of the name strongly suggests a pre-Greek origin, there is no conclusive linguistic evidence proving exactly what it meant.
What is clear is that Larissa is an exceptionally old place name. The area has been inhabited since prehistoric times, long before the city became one of the principal centres of Thessaly.
Ioannina
The name Ioannina is usually linked with Saint John.
One longstanding explanation connects it with a monastery dedicated to Saint John the Baptist that stood within the fortified settlement. The name may have developed from a form such as Agioannina or Agioanneia, effectively associating the place with Saint John. The Municipality of Ioannina records the monastery tradition among the explanations for the city’s name.
Another theory links the name with a woman called Ioannina, said to have been the daughter of the Byzantine general Belisarius, although this explanation is less widely accepted.
The city’s formal Greek name remains Ioannina, while the everyday form Giannena or Yannena reflects the way the name developed in spoken Greek.
Heraklion
Heraklion carries the name of one of Greek mythology’s greatest heroes.
The modern name derives from ancient Heracleium, a port associated with nearby Knossos and named for Heracles, or Hercules.
Ancient writers placed the harbour a short distance from Knossos, and its site is considered to have fallen within the area of today’s city.
The name did not remain in continuous everyday use. For centuries the city was widely known as Candia, a name that also came to be applied to Crete itself under Venetian rule.
Heraklion was revived as the city’s name in the 19th century, reconnecting the modern Cretan capital with the ancient port that had occupied the area.
Chania
Chania has had several names during its long history.
The ancient city on the site was Kydonia, or Cydonia, one of the important cities of western Crete.
After Arab rule and the Byzantine reconquest of Crete, however, the old name fell from use.
The prevailing explanation for Chania’s modern name connects it with a place called Alhania. During the period of Arab rule, the name is thought to have been associated with the Arabic Al Hanim. After the Arabs were expelled, the first syllable was apparently understood as the Arabic article al, leaving a form that developed into Chania. Under Venetian rule the city became known as Canea.
Its modern name therefore carries traces of the successive cultures that controlled Crete over centuries.
Alexandroupoli
Alexandroupoli has one of the most recent names on this list.
The modern city developed in the 19th century as a small fishing settlement known during Ottoman rule as Dedeağaç, generally translated as “the monk’s tree”.
After the city came under Greek administration in May 1920, local authorities initially chose the name Neapoli, meaning “new city”.
That did not last long.
King Alexander I visited the city in July 1920, and local authorities decided to rename it Alexandroupoli in his honour. The name literally means “city of Alexander”.
The name adopted during that visit remains in use today.
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