Lefkonas, Florina
Community in Greece
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lefkonas (Greek: Λευκώνας, before 1926: Πόπλη – Popli)[2] is a village in the Florina Regional Unit in West Macedonia, Greece.
Lefkonas
Λευκώνας | |
|---|---|
  Lefkonas Location within Greece | |
| Coordinates: 40°47′24″N 21°08′24″E | |
| Country | Greece |
| Administrative region | West Macedonia |
| Regional unit | Florina |
| Municipality | Prespes |
| Municipal unit | Prespes |
| Population (2021)[1] | |
• Community | 123 |
| Time zone | UTC+2 (EET) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC+3 (EEST) |
Name
Macedonian speaking locals of Prespa call this village Попли, Popli.[3] The forms of the toponym rendered with о, а and ъ indicate they emerged from a *o sound and would have originally been either Poplje or Pop'li from the Slavic *pop- pupak meaning navel, centre.[3] Pianka Włodzimierz writes that Poplje would be unlikely as the retention of l in this instance would not occur per the sound change norms of the Macedonian language.[3] Włodzimierz instead states that the toponym might have originally been *Po̧pъlje.[3] The toponym ending would have been replaced with a Turkish suffix lu, due to the importance of the village as a centre for Ottoman administration.[3] In Albanian, the village is called Pëpli.[4]
History
In the late 19th century, the village was the Ottoman administrative centre and seat of the müdir (district administrator) in the Lower Prespa area.[5] Following the Greek-Turkish population exchange, the village mosque was demolished and the church of Michael the Archangel was built in its place.[6] The village in the modern period is renowned for its landscaped gardens.[5] The main agricultural crop grown in the village are beans.[7]
Demographics
In the 1860s, Popli had 50 Christian houses.[5] In the early 1900s, 180 Slavonic speaking Christians and 210 Muslim Albanians lived in the village.[5]
The 1920 Greek census recorded 492 people in the village, and 270 inhabitants (40 families) were Muslim in 1923.[8] The Albanian village population was present until 1926 when they went to Turkey and were replaced with prosfiges (Greek refugees),[9] due to the Greek–Turkish population exchange. In Popli, 41 Greek refugee families were from Asia Minor in 1926.[8] The 1928 Greek census recorded 310 village inhabitants.[8] In 1928, the refugee families numbered 41 (129 people).[8] After the Greek Civil War, the Macedonian speaking population became a minority in the village.[5]
Lefkonas had 127 inhabitants in 1981.[10] In fieldwork done by anthropologist Riki Van Boeschoten in late 1993, Lefkonas was populated by a Greek population descended from Anatolian Greek refugees who arrived during the Greek–Turkish population exchange, and Slavophones.[10]