Changing the Map in Greece and Italy: Place-name Changes in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The concern of the newly founded Kingdom of Greece for the reestablishment of old place names dates to 1833 and was due to a clear and deliberate effort to break with the Ottoman past and connect the modern Greek state with ancient and Byzantine Greece. In post-Risorgimento Italy, the fundamental causes of toponymic changes was
to lessen the potential for confusion between the numerous homonymous municipalities that, once part of various sovereign states, were now part of a single nation. This article discusses the parallel paths that Greece and Italy followed on the renaming issue, where the internal discourse evolved within similar political and ideological parameters, both at an administrative and public dialogue level. However, despite their similarities, the final decisions in Greece and Italy were dictated by, firstly, the administrative organisation and structure selected by each country and, secondly, the political and ideological priorities, which were set in direct correlation with the domestic political conflicts, as well as the different circumstances each country faced in relation to its borders and the rise of antagonistic neighbouring nationalisms.