Aristi

Aristi is a village in the Ioannina Regional Unit in Epirus, northwestern Greece.

Name

The village is recorded with the form Artzista both in the Chronicle of Ioannina and in the book Chronography by scholar Panagiotis Aravantinos. Aravantinos described the toponym as Albanian. It is derived from the Albanian phytonym arrç, -i and the Slavic-derived Albanian suffix -ishtë, which indicates the place where a certain type of grass, bush, or tree grows.

History

Aristi is one of the 46 historic villages of Zagori, known in Greek as the Zagorochoria. During the Ottoman census of 1895, Aristi had 899 inhabitants. During the last years of Ottoman rule, the village had a boys' school with 50 students and a girls' school with 40 students.
The village became part of Greece in 1913, following the First Balkan War. The first Greek census that year recorded a population of 574. In 2021, the village had 115 inhabitants.