Dodecanese of the major islands under Italian rule back to twelve. Thus, when the Greek press began agitating for the cession of the islands to Greece in 1913, the term used was still the "Dodecanese". The Italian occupation authorities helped to establish the term when they named the islands under their control "Rhodes and the Dodecanese" ("Rodi e Dodecaneso"), adding Leipsoi to the list of the major islands to make up for considering Rhodes separately. By 1920, the name had become firmly established for the entire island group, a fact acknowledged by the Italian government when it appointed the islands' first
Dodecanese sources in the 8th century, as a naval command under a "droungarios", encompassing the southern Aegean Sea, which eventually evolved into the Theme of Samos. However it was not applied to the current island group, but to the twelve Cyclades islands clustered around Delos. The name may indeed be of far earlier date, and modern historians suggest that a list of 12 islands given by Strabo ("Geographica" Χ.485) was the origin of the term. The term remained in use throughout the medieval period and was still used for the Cyclades in both colloquial usage and scholarly Greek-language literature until the