Sorry for the repetition of some information but I am trying to sum up here some of my past posts from another forum. Below another post of mine citing information about the village's name and the Slavic settlement from a book about our village (Ekkisohori- Tsarkovista Ioanninon by P.D.Tziovas):
Most of the villages' names were changed or hellenized in the 20th century. Our village's name was changed in 1928 from Tsarkovista to Ekklisohori (Greek literal translation). Others changed even as late as the 1950's or even 60's, if I remember right.
Now about the name of our village, more specifically, I am quoting (and translating) P.D. Tziovas from his book: Ekklisohori, Tsarkovista Ioanninon:
"The name Tsarkovista or Tserkovista is produced by the Slavic Curkua (=church) and together with the known toponymic ending -ica, it means position of a church, or place dedicated to a church or even a village near a church and this, beacause the ending -ista is plural (Bettis). Labridis supports that the name is "signifying a place with the meaning, small royal property, from the replacement of consonants in Tsarskovica", and in another instance he claims that the name comes from "cerkov (=church) and that it denotes a dedication to the maintainance of a church". Finally, Vasmer regards as most probable that the name is produced by the Bulgarian, tsirky, tserkov, tserko-viste that means church".
"According to Pr. Zakinthinos the epirot toponyms Tsarkovista, Tserkovista, Tserkouviana etc. are etymologically connected to the Old Slavic word meaning church and as such could not be older than the second half of the 9th century, when the apostolic action was observed for the christianization of the Slavs. The size of the villages (oikismoi) where the Slavs settled depended on the number and the order of the inhabitants and ranged from 5,000 to 30,000 square meters. Each village (oikismos) had on average 8-10 houses with 40-50 appr. inhabitants, while the big villages could reach 20 houses with approx. 100 inhabitants."
"Based on this, the largest group of Slavic invaders must have settled to the west of today's village in the position "Selio" which means village, where there was according to the inhabitants' tradition, the most ancient church of the area, dedicated to Saint Taxiarches. Of course, the Slavic invaders settled all over the village, by displacing or annihilating the weaker local residents, from whom only the women survived, who through intermarriage secured many racial qualities of the natives, with first and foremost the passing down of the Greek language to new generations".
In this other forum, some people suggested that the Vajunites must be mostly connected to the Eastern Balkans (eg Bulgaria, North Macedonia...) judging from the linguistics of the toponyms. He also gave me the example of a word we use, ververica, saying that it is similar to the Macedonian language.
Well, that's it for now. Any ideas or opinions are more than welcome!
Hvala! Laku noć!