Laista

Laista is a settlement in Ioannina regional unit, Epirus, Greece. The village located in the northern part of the Zagori region.

Name

In the nineteenth century scholar Ioannis Lambridis said four families from a village called Lasste transmitted the name of their former place of residence to Laista. Lambridis wrote Laista was the oldest name of the village, known also as Lakka. Scholar Panagiotis Aravantinos wrote the toponym is Albanian. It is derived from the Albanian word lashtë meaning 'ancient, old' and the development of the sound i in the placename. Linguist Kostas Oikonomou states the toponym recorded by Lambridis with a double s indicate an Aromanian pronunciation of š, itself from the Albanian sh.

Demographics

Laista has an Aromanian population and is an Aromanian speaking village. Laista forms an Aromanian dialect cluster with the villages of Lesnitsa and Dobrinovo whose spoken Aromanian differs from other Aromanian speaking villages of the wider area due to some distinct linguistic features. In the early 20th century, some Greek speaking Sarakatsani settled in Laista.