Neapoli, Kozani


Neapoli, is a town in the Kozani regional unit of West Macedonia in northern Greece. A former municipality, it has been a municipal unit of Voio since the 2011 local government reform. The municipal unit has an area of 238.277 km2, the community 22.001 km2. The municipal unit has a population of 3,246 while the community has 2,063 inhabitants. The community consists of the town Neapoli and village Melidoni.

Name

An original name of modern Neapoli was Lapsista. Linguist Max Vasmer states the toponym was Lěvšišče and cognate with the Serbo–Croatian Lepšić, a personal name derived from the Slavic word lěp meaning "nice". Linguist Yordan Zaimov associated the toponym Lapsista with the Bulgarian toponym Lapšišta, deriving both from Lubčište in reference to a personal name formed from Lubko, with bč in Slavic rendered as ps in Greek.
Linguist Konstantinos Oikonomou derives the toponym from the Albanian word lafsh/ë referring to the plumage or plume of a rooster. The term when applied in a geographical context could refer to small mountainous heights. The word lafsh/ë along with either the Slavic ending or Albanian suffix ishta resulted in the phonetic form l'afšišta/''liafšišta through the Albanian l'' and Leafšišta or Leausista where i became e near the l. In the last form of the toponym, the sound ea turned into a and fš became ps resulting in Lapsista. Other villages with the name are Ano and Lower Lapsista in Greek Epirus.
Under Ottoman rule, the town was known as Nasliç in Turkish. In Greek, the form Anaselitsa, derived from a nearby village Seltsa was also used for the town and the wider area until the late 1920s.

History

Michael Kalinderis lists Leipista as populated by Greek speaking Muslim Vallahades. The 1920 Greek census recorded 1401 people in the town, and 250 inhabitants were Muslim in 1923. Following the Greek–Turkish population exchange, Greek refugee families in Leipsista were from East Thrace, Asia Minor, Pontus and the Caucasus in 1926. The 1928 Greek census recorded 1592 town inhabitants. In 1928, the refugee families numbered 239. The town mosque was destroyed and some remnants of its masonry were incorporated in the foundations of the Financial Tax Office building.