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Lofou, Cyprus

Lofou (Greek : Λόφου ) is a community of the District of Limassol

Older Name: Lofos. The Name of the mountain village ist derived from "Lofos" (Hill)

Year	Population
1946	923
1960	234
1982	106
1992	37
2001	10

Lofou, Cyprus

Church Panagia Chrysolofitissa, Lofou, Photo : Augusta Stylianou Artist

Establishment

There are no historical findings that may help us define the exact date on which 'Lofou' was founded. The area must have been inhabited since the Bronze Age.

The dominant view regards that the village must have been founded some years before Cyprus was occupied by the Franks in the late 12th century. During that time and because of the Ottoman invasions, the locals were forced to abandon the coasts and move to the inner parts of the island in order to find refuge. The location of the village was truly ideal for their needs since it is hidden in the mountains and, as a consequence, it provided a sense of security. This theory is also supported by Nearchos Kliridis (1961) and J. C. Goodwin (1977), both of whom support that the village must have been built before the word 'lofos' was replaced by the word 'laonin'. There are quite a few settlements in Greece under the name 'Lofos' or 'Lofoi' (hills), a fact that confirms the theories of Simos Menandros (1970) and other researchers that we should consider the village 'ancient'. The same applies to all other villages whose names derive from words that have been replaced or are no longer used.

The Name

The village is built on a hill between mountains and gets its name based on this fact. The name Lofou was inspired by the Greek word 'lofos' which means 'hill'. The original name of the village was "Lofos" since the early 20th century. That can be proven by the birth certificates provided by the local primary school, on which "Lofos" was written as the birth place of the students.

Simos Menandros (1970) supports that the renaming of the village from "Lofos" to "Lofou" may be attributed to a linguistic change in the everyday language of local farmers. The latter's used "Lofou" to refer to the village, since they were using such kind of suffixes when they were referring to the village's residents or its local products. This change of gender ('Lofou' is considered as being of female gender having the suffix "ou") is also justified by the need to accompany the word Lofou with the word 'komi' which is also female in gender and means burgh. It was normal for someone at those times to assume that since 'komi' was female in gender, 'Lofou' should be female as well. Therefore, 'Lofou' ended up having a female gender because of a linguistic change in morphology. 'Lofou' is the name by which the village is nowadays widely known and referred to.

Lofou, Cyprus