Santorini or Thira? Oia, Fira and the island's names explained

The short answer

Santorini and Thira, or Thera, are names for the same island. Greece's national tourism organisation (GNTO) says Santorini was known in ancient times as Thera,[1] and Wikidata lists Thira and Thera, and the Greek Θήρα, as other names for it.[3]

The confusion comes from the fact that Thira is also an administrative name, used at several levels, and that the island's main town, Fira, is itself sometimes called Thira.[5] Oia and Fira are not other names for the island: they are two settlements on it, both inside the Municipality of Thira.[2] XTOUR plans Santorini as one destination, the island itself, with Oia and Fira as parts of it rather than as separate destinations.

Kallisti, Thera and Santa Irini: where the names came from

The ancient name comes from a founder. The Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades tells, after the historian Herodotus, how Theras led settlers from Sparta to the island and gave it his name, replacing the earlier name Kallisti; the city he founded, on the Mesa Vouno hill, was called Thera too.[9] Hellenic Heritage, the official platform of the Ministry of Culture and ODAP, tells the same story.[10] The form Kallisti also appears in Wikidata's name for one of the municipality's present-day communities, Pyrgos Kallistis.[6]

"Santorini" comes from a church of Saint Irene, Santa Irini, but two official sources point to different churches. The Ephorate says the early Byzantine basilica of Agia Irini at Perissa, in the ancient southern port called Eleusis, eventually gave its name to the island, which changed from Thera to Santa Irini, that is, Santorini.[11] The Municipality of Thira's tourism site points instead to the small church of Aghia Irini above Riva, the port of the neighbouring island of Thirasia, and presents the link as "a theory".[12] XTOUR reports both and does not choose.

The spellings Thera and Thira both appear on official pages today. The Ephorate's and Hellenic Heritage's pages write Thera, as in Ancient Thera and Akrotiri of Thera, and the Ephorate's Skaros page even refers to "the Municipality of Thera", while the municipality's own website calls itself Thira.[2][18][10][9] The guide to the Greek alphabet on signs explains why one Greek name can reach English in more than one spelling.

One island or a group of islands?

The name Santorini is used both for the main island and for the small group around its caldera. The GNTO says Santorini "comprises a complex of islands": Thera, Thirasia, Aspronisi, Palea Kameni and Nea Kameni.[1] Hellenic Heritage says the eruption that cut short the island's prehistoric Cycladic civilisation broke a once unified land into the islands now known as Thera, Therasia and Aspronisi.[10] Wikidata's item for the Santorini archipelago adds a sixth member, the Christiana Islands, which the GNTO's list does not name.[7]

The main island, Thera, is the Santorini that XTOUR maps. Thirasia is a separate island: the Municipality of Thira's tourism site calls it Santorini's sister island, gives its surface as 9.3 square kilometres and names Manolas as its main village.[12] XTOUR has no record for Thirasia, Aspronisi or the Christiana Islands and does not treat them as part of its Santorini destination.

Thira as an administrative name

Most of the confusing uses of Thira are administrative, and the Municipality of Thira's history page sets them out.[2]

The municipality. Under Law 2539/1997, twelve of Santorini's thirteen historical communities were merged into one municipality, and the Community of Oia was joined with the community of Thirasia. Under Law 3852/2010, the Kallikrates plan, Thira Municipality took in Thirasia-Oia as well, so that one municipality now covers "the whole cluster of islands of Santorini".[2] Wikidata names Fira as the municipality's capital.[4]

Two municipal units. The municipality is divided into the municipal units of Thira and Oia.[2] Wikidata spells the second one Ia and places two communities in it, Ia itself and Thirasia,[6] which matches the municipality's account of Oia being joined with Thirasia in 1997.[2]

Communities. The municipality lists its municipal communities as Thirasia, Oia, Vourvoulos, Imerovigli, Fira, Karterados, Messaria, Vothonas, Episkopi Gonias (Kamari and Exo Gonia), Exo Gonia, Pyrgos, Megalochori, Emborio and Akrotiri. The same page's menu of local councils lists a "Community of Thira" and no separate Fira entry.[2] Wikidata has a Commune of Thira and places Fira in it.[5] XTOUR has not read a municipal page that says outright that the Community of Thira and Fira's community are the same body, so it treats that as Wikidata's statement.

The regional unit. The municipality says it forms the Thira Regional Unit together with the municipalities of Ios, Sikinos, Folegandros and Anafi.[2] So a "Thira" address at regional level can refer to islands well beyond Santorini. Wikidata gives Fira as the capital of the regional unit as well as of the municipality.[5]

Fira, the town that is also called Thira

Fira is the island's main town. Wikidata's Greek label for it is Φηρά Θήρας, "Fira of Thira", and it lists Thira as an alias.[5] That is why the same word can mean an island, a municipality and a town.

Fira's role as capital is relatively recent. The Ephorate says the inhabitants of Skaros, the medieval castle-town on the caldera that it calls the first Venetian capital of Thera, abandoned it after the eruptions of 1707 to 1711 and 1866 to 1870 and settled in Fira, the modern capital.[18] The Municipality of Thira's tourism site says Fira began to develop in the 18th century with that resettlement and became the capital in the 19th century, and calls it Santorini's largest town. Two of the island's museums are in Fira: the Archaeological Museum and the Museum of Prehistoric Thera.[13] The guide to Akrotiri and Ancient Thera explains which finds each one holds.

Oia: a village, a municipal unit and an older name

Oia is the village at the island's northwestern tip, where the municipality's tourism site places the castle of Agios Nikolaos.[17] The Municipality of Thira's tourism site calls it a preserved settlement since 1976, the "village of the captains", and names Ammoudi and Armeni as its two old ports.[14][15] It is also the name of one of the municipality's two municipal units, the one that includes Thirasia.[2]

The official pages use other names for the same northwestern tip. The Ephorate calls the area Epano Meria, or Epanomerea, and names its medieval castle after a church of Agios Nikolaos; it says the settlement there was the most populous on the island in accounts from 1655 and 1745. They also date the castle differently: the Ephorate counts it among the five fortified castles of the first period of Frankish rule, in the 13th and 14th centuries, and says its initial core is attested from 1480, while the municipality's tourism site says it was constructed around 1450.[15][17]

The name Oia also had an older, different use. The Ephorate's page on Ancient Thera names Oia as one of the ancient city's two ports, "to the north (Kamari)", with Eleusis, at Perissa, to the south.[9] XTOUR has not read an official page explaining how the name came to the northern village, so it treats the ancient port and the modern village as two different uses of one name.

Thera, the ancient city

When a museum or a ticket says Ancient Thera, it means neither Fira nor the municipality but the ancient city on the Mesa Vouno hill above the southeastern coast, which the Ephorate says was founded in the 8th century BC.[9] The guide to Akrotiri and Ancient Thera compares it with the Bronze Age town at Akrotiri, a different site on the island's southwestern coast.

Nea Kameni, Palea Kameni and the caldera

The municipality's tourism site says the current caldera was formed when the crater collapsed after what it calls the Minoan eruption, and that the two islets at the centre of the island group, Palea Kameni and Nea Kameni, are "what we call 'the volcano' today".[16] Wikidata describes both as islands in the Santorini caldera and places them in the Municipality of Thira, within its Commune of Thira.[8] The GNTO lists them as islands of the group alongside Thera rather than as part of it,[1] and XTOUR has no record for either.

How XTOUR uses these names

XTOUR's Santorini destination is the island of Thera. Its places on the island are all recorded with the municipality as Thira: the Bronze Age town at Akrotiri, Ancient Thera under Kamari, the Museum of Prehistoric Thera in Fira, the Castle of Oia in Oia, and the castle of Skaros, which has no locality in its record. Oia and Fira are localities within the destination, not destinations of their own, and nothing on Thirasia or the Kameni islets is mapped. For how Santorini compares with Mykonos, Crete and Corfu on XTOUR, see Choosing a Greek island, and for the Cyclades as a group, Greek island groups explained.

What XTOUR does not know

XTOUR has not read which name, Santorini or Thira, a given ferry company, airline or road sign uses, and does not publish boat connections to Thirasia or the Kameni islets. It does not know the boundaries of the individual communities on the ground, and it gives no population figures for the island's villages.