Like your geography lessons simple? Okay. Between Turkey and the Greek island of Ikaria (Icarus, sun, problem with wings, fatal crash) is a little archipelago of 12 islands known as Fourni. The archipelago’s main island is called Fourni, and this island’s capital is known as, er, Fourni.
The name might make you think of fornication — the island does have more than 30 stunning beaches; some of them deserted and suitable for that sort of caper — but, according to a 16th-century Venetian geographer called Bordone, it derives from fornelli, meaning small ovens.
Small ovens, not because the place gets bloody hot in summer (which it does), but because the port (that’s the port of Fourni) is concave and reminded someone of a small oven.
So what kind of people live in a small oven, where everything is called Fourni? Strange people, you might not be surprised to hear.
