Guided Sofia tours – Serdika to Sofia
Guided Sofia tours and also click on contact us and learn more about Sofia. In 1400 – 1300 BC the population in Sofia’s area was the Thracian tribe of Tilataei. The tribe Serdi, invaded the area in the 3rd century BC. The first name of Sofia, Serdika and the name that the city possessed the longest time, was a Thracian name. It came from the tribe Serdi, who were either of Thracian, Celtic, or mixed Thracian-Celtic origin.
The name Serdica or Sardica was popular in Latin, Ancient Greek and Byzantine Greek sources from Antiquity and the Middle Ages. It was related to the local Celtic tribe of the Serdi. The last use of the name was in the 19th century in a Bulgarian text, ‘Service and hagiography of Saint George the New of Sofia’.
Greek medieval sources mentioned another one of Sofia’s names, Triaditsa. The Bulgarian name Sredets (СРѢДЄЦЪ), which is related to среда (sreda), which means middle, first appeared in the 11th-century Vision of Daniel and was widely used in the Middle Ages.
Atralissa
The Slavic name Sredets first appeared in the 11th century. The Arab traveller Idrisi called the city Atralissa and Strelisa, Stralitsa or Stralitsion by the Crusaders.
Ottomans called the city Sofya. Now Sofia is related to the Holy Wisdom. (Apostle Paul prays for “the Spirit of wisdom” for the Christian community in Ephesus when he is there. This wisdom is expressed in knowledge and revelation, faith and love, and hope and power. Ephesus day tours)
The current name Sofia was first used in the 14th-century Vitosha Charter of Bulgarian tsar Ivan Shishman or in a Ragusan merchant’s notes of 1376. It refers to the famous Holy Sophia Church. This is an ancient church in the city named after the Christian concept of the Holy Wisdom. Although Sredets remained in use until the late 18th century, Sofia gradually overcame the Slavic name in popularity. During the Ottoman rule the Turkish conquerors of Bulgaria called it Sofia.
Bulgarians pronounce the city’s name with a stress on the ‘o’, in contrast with the tendency of foreigners to place the stress on ‘i’. On the other hand, Bulgarians pronounce the female name “Sofia” with a stress on the ‘i’.
You can see the ruins from Serdica in your walking tours Sofia. We are specialists on doing tailor-made tours not only in Bulgaria but in Turkey and the Balkans as well. Please, contact us and learn more about our tours. Let us introduce different places to you so you can design your own tour.
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