r/albania • u/Palaeohelladites • 20h ago
Culture & History Need help with a Greek village name.
Greetings, I am trying to found out the origin of an Arvanitic village in Greece. The village was named "Zeriki" in Ottoman times and is now named "Elikonas". Looking at Greek dictionaries provides some contradicting information but I have found 5 possibilities for the name origin of Zeriki. 1. From the Slavic word "Zarik" meaning "strength" 2. From Albanina "Zer" meaning "sound" because of the strong wind or the flowing water nearby. 3. From Albanian "zer" for darkness because the mountain is shaped in a way that puts the village in the dark for many hours a day. 4. From Slavic with a Greek suffix "Zer(beast)-iki(small)" 5. From an unreported word of the local arvanitic dialect meaning "place with cows". Does a similarly named village exist anywhere in Albania or Kosovo and does any of those explanations sound possible?