Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 January 4

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January 4

How many houses did a Greek village have in the 1910s?

I have a feeling that this will be too technical to get any answers, but I’ve searched elsewhere in vain and I’m growing desperate.

What was the average number of houses or other buildings for a Greek village back in the 1910s? —(((Romanophile))) ♞ (contributions) 22:53, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

For one thing "village" is a loosely defined term. A Greek village in the 1910s would not be significantly different from any other village. One factor to consider would be the average number of people in a household, perhaps? 2603:6081:1C00:1187:3589:2277:515F:C867 (talk) 02:35, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

The Greek Wikipedia states that for a settlement to be considered a "village" (χωριό), it needs to comprise at least ten permanent dwellings, housing a population of 50 to 1,999 inhabitants. But this is a modern criterion, the result of "original research synthesis", and the upper bound of 1,999 inhabitants seems ludicrously low. The population size of cities tends to follow a power law (see Power law § Economics), but for smaller settlements a log-normal distribution gives a better fit (see Gibrat's law). In either case, the choice of the definitional cut-off bounds will have a large influence on the average, not just the arithmetic average but also on more robust measures such as the median.  --Lambiam 10:16, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

As you note, there is no universal definition of terms like "village", "town" or "hamlet" or things like that, but various legal jurisdictions may have very specific definitions of them. For example, the article Village (United States) shows that the term has a WIDE variety of meanings in just the various US states, from "Municipalities in Delaware are called cities, towns, or villages. There are no differences among them that would affect their classification for census purposes" to "In Nebraska, a village is a municipality of 100 through 800 inhabitants, whereas a city must have at least 800 inhabitants." Modern Greece does not seem to define villages for any specific purpose, per Administrative divisions of Greece and Municipalities and communities of Greece, it only recognized two different kinds of municipalities: "municipal communities" for larger settlements and "local communities" for smaller ones, but since 2019 no longer draws any such distinction. However, the modern Greek state really only dates to 1975, having previously been administrated by a variety of military dictatorships, monarchies, and republics dating back to independence (1820s). Each of those different polities may or may not have handled municipal definitions differently. In 1910s, this would have been under the reigns of George I of Greece and Constantine I of Greece. Major land reforms came in the wake of the Greek Constitution of 1911, so that may give you some leads for places to research your topic. --Jayron32 16:35, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

If you can read French or Greek, the 1920 census is available in a bilingual version. Starting on page 22 of the pdf are lists of villages with population counts [1]. On the first page, I see places ranging from 1 person to 6,651 people, but most are less than 500. Translating that into houses will still need legwork, but at least this gets you closer. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 19:07, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I see no distinction in the census data between towns and villages.  --Lambiam 23:39, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi Lambian, why do you think that is necessary? Romanophile asked for sizes of human settlements; I don't see where it would matter if they are officially called one thing or another, even though the answerers got sidetracked by that question. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 23:34, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

The OP asked for the average number of buildings in "a Greek village". I think that would exclude human settlements like Athens and Saloniki with multi-storey city blocks.  --Lambiam 10:48, 7 January 2022 (UTC)