Pindos

History of the name

By the eighteenth century, there had been identification of the name Metsovo with the Pindos mountain range (in a French encyclopedia of 1756). BY 1825, the traveller John Cam Hobhouse was writing that "…the latter mountains, now known by the name of Metzovo, can be no other than Pindus itself…" while a patriarchal document of 1818 states: "Because the high mountain of Pindos in Epirus, that is commonly called Messovon...". The word Pindos was used more in literary sources, while the folk name for the mountain range from the Middle Ages up to the 19th century was either "Metsovo" or "the mountains of Metsovo". Most probably this name was not meant to indicate the whole range as it is meant today, but only its central part between the area of Aspropotamos and the springs of the Aoös River. This part coincides with the mountainous region which the ancient Greeks used to call Pindos.