Changing the names of the city and its streets

The same decision by the Minister of the Interior, I. Rallis, recognised most refugee settlements of Attica as independent municipalities or villages. Six years later, the settlement’s Municipal Council ran a contest for the renaming of the Municipality, inviting proposals inspired by historical cities of Asia Minor, Pontus and Thrace. The winner would receive a prize of 2,000 drachmas. Among the dozens of proposed names were Militos, Ilion, Troy, Ephesus, Pafra, Troas, and Nikaia. In the end, the Council chose the name Nikaia, proposed by Ioannis Melas, a lawyer and later mayor of Nikaia. The name was considered to be the most symbolic and historic, qualities that made it suitable for the refugee municipality. On September 3, 1940, the law approving the renaming of the settlement was published in the Government Gazette. 

Nikaia was not the only place name in the city inspired by Asia Minor, Pontus and Thrace. All the streets of Nea Kokkinia starting from the original residential core built by the Refugee Settlement Commission and ending at the last houses built by the Commission in Krini were named after cities on the Asia Minor coast: Vryoulon, Efesou, Ilioupoleos, Ionias, Kaisareias, Kydonion and so on; the streets recited the homelands of the city residents in alphabetical order. The names of the people who contributed to the creation of the settlement and the relief efforts were also used to name streets: Henry Morgenthau, American Women’s Hospitals, Gervasiou Grevenon. Over the following years, a few street names were changed to honour fighters of the Greek Resistance, such as Konstaninos Gemelos, but most remained the same to remind residents and visitors of the city’s refugee past.