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For an in depth analysis of the often confusing terms regarding Macedonia, see Macedonia (terminology).

The naming dispute between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia over the name of the latter, its main ethnic group, and their language has escalated to the highest point of international mediation, involving attempts to a resolution notably through the United Nations.

The provisional reference "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" (FYROM) is currently always used in relations when states not recognizing the constitutional name are parties, although all UN member-states, and the UN as a whole, have agreed to accept any final agreement resulting from negotiations between the two countries.

The ongoing dispute is still pending full resolution and has created a great amount of political and academic argument for both sides.

Background

The naming issue has not yet been resolved, but it has effectively reached a stalemate. In 1993, the United Nations obtained Greece's acquiesence to the admission of the Republic of Macedonia by adopting the provisional reference of "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" or "FYROM" (поранешна Југословенска Република Македонија - ПЈРМ) (a name that, according to the BBC, the majority of the population dislike).

The term "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" is purely a provisional reference — describing how the UN calls the state — rather than a determination by the UN of what the state's name should be (hence not a provisional name). This is emphasized by the fact that the expression begins with the uncapitalised words "the former". The UN also did not seek to set a standard for how others should refer to the republic, emphasizing that the reference had been adopted for use only "within the United Nations". The same convention was adopted by many other international organizations and states but they did so independently, not as the result of being instructed by the UN. The United Nations Security Council has emphasized that the reference is purely descriptive and "merely reflected the historic fact that it had been in the past a republic of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."

However, the compromise is wearing increasingly thin, as an increasing number of states have recognized the country as the "Republic of Macedonia" instead. Some had recognized it by this name from the start, while most others had switched from the FYROM usage. By October 2005, these amount to 106 countries.

The compromise reference is always used in relations when states not recognizing the constitutional name are parties. This is due to the fact that the UN refers to the country only as FYROM, although all UN member-states (and the UN itself) have agreed to accept any final agreement resulting from negotiations between the two countries.

The dispute continues to excite passions in both nations, but in practice the two countries deal pragmatically with each other. Economic relations and cooperation have resumed since 1995 to such an extent that Greece is now considered one of the republic's most important foreign economic partners and investors.

Within Greece, many Greeks reject any use of the word "Macedonia" to describe the Republic of Macedonia, instead calling it ΠΓΔΜ (Πρώην Γιουγκοσλαβική Δημοκρατία της Μακεδονίας), the Greek version of FYROM, or Skopje and its inhabitants Skopians (Greek: Skopiani), after the country's capital. This metonymic name is not used by non-Greeks, and many inhabitants of the Republic regard it as insulting. However, Greek official sources sometimes use the term "Slavomacedonian" to refer to the Republic's inhabitants; the US State Department has used the term side by side with "Macedonian", albeit having them both in quotation marks. The name "Macedonian Slavs" (Македонски Словени) is another term used to refer to the ethnic Macedonians by non-Greeks. A number of news agencies have used it (although the BBC recently discontinued its use on the grounds that people had alleged it was offensive), and it is used by the Encarta Encyclopedia. The name has been occasionally used in early ethnic Macedonian literary sources as in Krste Misirkov's work On Macedonian Matters (Za Makedonckite Raboti) in 1903.

The United Nations set a target of September 13, 2002 for reaching a solution to the issue. This date passed without any solution being found and it is unclear how the issue will be resolved, given the apparently irreconcilable positions of the two sides. The Republic of Macedonia says that it will not abandon the name "Macedonia", while Greece says that it will not accept any permanent name that includes "Macedonia".

The March 2004 application of the Republic of Macedonia for membership of the European Union may help to speed efforts to find a solution; in a meeting of 14 September 2004, the EU noted that the difference over the name of the Republic of Macedonia still persists and encouraged parties to find a mutually acceptable solution, but stated that it is not part of the conditions for EU accession. However, the Greek foreign minister, Ms. Dora Bakoyannis, has affirmed that "...the Hellenic Parliament, under any composition, will not ratify the accession of the neighbouring country to the EU and NATO if the name issue is not resolved beforehand."

In 2005, Matthew Nimetz, UN Special Representative for the country, suggested using "Republika Makedonija-Skopje" for official purposes. Greece did not accept the proposal outright, but characterized it as "a basis for constructive negotiations". Prime Minister Vlado Buckovski rejected the proposal and counterproposed a "double formula" where the international community uses "Republic of Macedonia" and Greece uses "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia".

In October 2005 Nimetz made a new proposal. It proposes that the name "Republika Makedonija" should be used by the 106 countries that have recognized the country under that name. It proposes, also, that Greece should use the formula "Republika Makedonija – Skopje", while the international institutions and organizations should use the name "Republika Makedonia" in Latin alphabet transcription. While the government of the Republic of Macedonia accepted the proposal as a good basis for solving the dispute, Greece rejected the proposal as unacceptable.

In December 2006, the government of the Republic announced the intent to rename Skopje Airport "Petrovec" to "Aleksandar Veliki" (Alexander the Great). Mathew Nimetz was invited by Athens in January 2007, where he commented that the efforts to mediate in the issue over the name were "affected and not in a positive way". Template:MultiCol

List of countries/entities recognizing "Republic of Macedonia" (RoM)

By October 2005, these amount to 106 countries.

Three of the five permanent UN Security Council members:

• United States (Republican-controlled federal government; the Democrat-controlled Congress uses the designation "Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)")
• Russia
• People's Republic of China

All other former Yugoslavian republics:

• Serbia
• Montenegro
• Croatia
• Bosnia-Herzegovina
• Slovenia (EU and NATO member)

Neighbor:

• Bulgaria (EU and NATO member)

In addition, the following countries have also recognized the nation by its constitutional name:

• Turkey (NATO member)
• Romania (EU and NATO member)
• Hungary (EU and NATO member)
• Moldova

| class="col-break " |

List of countries/entities recognizing "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" (FYROM)

• Australia
• Canada (NATO member)
• France (EU and NATO member)
• Germany (EU and NATO member)
• Greece (EU and NATO member)
• India
• Italy (EU and NATO member)
• Spain (EU and NATO member)

List of countries/entities to be sorted

• Sovereign Military Order of Malta
• Taiwan (1999-2001)

The following states have inconsistent official references to the country, using both names:

• Albania
• Poland (EU and NATO member)

List of countries/entities that have not yet granted recognition as either RoM, or FYROM

The following countries/entities have no diplomatic relations with the state: Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Georgia, Malta, Cyprus, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, South Korea, Philippines, Bhutan, Brunei, Mali, Liberia, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Bahamas, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Barbados, Paraguay, Chile, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Tonga, Fiji, Palestinian Authority, Sahrawi Republic Template:EndMultiCol

Greek position

The constitutional name of the country "Republic of Macedonia" and the short name "Macedonia" when referring to the country, can be considered offensive by most Greeks, especially inhabitants of the Greek province of Macedonia. The Greek government officially uses the term Slavomacedonian to describe both the language and a member of the ethnic group, and the United Nations' provisional reference for the country (the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) by the main international organisations, including the United Nations. The official reasons for this, as described by the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, are:

"The choice of the name Macedonia by FYROM directly raises the issue of usurpation of the cultural heritage of a neighbouring country. The name constitutes the basis for staking an exclusive rights claim over the entire geographical area of Macedonia. More specifically, to call only the Slavo-Macedonians Macedonians monopolizes the name for the Slavo-Macedonians and creates semiological confusion, whilst violating the human rights and the right to self-determination of Greek Macedonians. The use of the name by FYROM alone may also create problems in the trade area, and subsequently become a potential springboard for distorting reality, and a basis for activities far removed from the standards set by the European Union and more specifically the clause on good neighbourly relations. The best example of this is to be seen in the content of school textbooks in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia."

However, the current leader of the major opposition party, PASOK, George Papandreou has stated that "in January 2002, when he was Minister for Foreign Affairs, was next to a deal with Skopia leadership about using the name «Gorna Macedonia». The other parties and the President of the Democracy -he said- were informed but the solution process didn't work, because the Tetovo crisis broke out."

The Greek concerns can be analyzed as follows:

Historical concerns

The name is historically associated with Greek culture, notably that of the kingdom of Macedon. Greeks consider that the inhabitants of the neighbouring republic —most of whom are descendants of Slavic tribes who first immigrated into the region around the 6th century CE— have no historical right to claim the use of the name "Macedonia" for themselves. Macedonian nationalists and communist-era Yugoslav propagandists have tried to associate the republic with ancient Macedon, making a number of historically dubious claims. These historic claims are continued in the present-day Republic and in the diaspora, even by official sources, and political actions (see plans to rename the Skopje Airport to "Alexander Makedonski"), and are further reinforced by pseudoscientific theories (see The Arnaiz-Villena controversy).

The territory of the Republic of Macedonia was not called that as a political entity until 1944, when it ceased to be called South Serbia, and Yugoslavia was divided into separate republics. While it is certainly a small part of the historical region of Macedonia, there is no continuity, political, historical, ethnic, linguistic or otherwise, between ancient Macedon and the modern Republic of Macedonia.

Loring M. Danforth, a professor of anthropology working at Bates College in the United States who has written many award winning books and articles on Republic of Macedonia, Greece, Australia and nationalism, reports:

Extreme Macedonian nationalists, who are concerned with demonstrating the continuity between ancient and modern Macedonians, deny that they are Slavs and claim to be the direct descendants of Alexander the Great and the ancient Macedonians. The more moderate Macedonian position, generally adopted by better educated Macedonians and publicly endorsed by Kiro Gligorov, the first president of the newly independent Republic of Macedonia, is that modern Macedonians have no relation to Alexander the Great, but are a Slavic people whose ancestors arrived in Macedonia in the sixth century AD. Proponents of both the extreme and the moderate Macedonian positions stress that the ancient Macedonians were a distinct non-Greek people.

The Times Guide to the Peoples of Europe affirms that:

Macedonian rock groups may claim Alexander the Great as a forefather of their nation but even the recent scholarly histories of the Macedonians spanning three millennia are spurious and only lay the Macedonians open to the ridicule of those who would deny their nationhood; the Macedonian regional name is ancient but contemporary Macedonians are among the newest nations in Europe.

Territorial concerns

During the Greek Civil War, in 1947 the Greek Ministry of Press and Information published a book, I Enandion tis Ellados Epivoulis ("Designs on Greece"), namely of documents and speeches on the ongoing Macedonian issue, many translations from Yugoslav officials. It reports Josip Broz Tito using the term "Aegean Macedonia" on October 11, 1945 in the build up to the Greek Civil War; the original document is archived in ‘GFM A/24581/G2/1945’. For Athens in 1947, the “new term, Aegean Macedonia”, (also “Pirin Macedonia”), was introduced by Yugoslavs. Contextually, this observation indicates this was part of the Yugoslav offensive against Greece, laying claim to Greek Macedonia, but Athens does not seem to take issue with the term itself . The 1945 date concurs with Bulgarian sources.

Tito's war time representative to Macedonia, General Tempo (Svetozar Vukmanovic), is credited with promoting the usage of the new regional names of the Macedonian region for irredentist purposes.

Greece suspects that the Republic of Macedonia has territorial ambitions in the northern Greek provinces of Macedonia. This has been a Greek concern for decades; as far back as 1957, the Greek government expressed concern about reported Yugoslav ambitions to create an "independent" People's Republic of Macedonia with the Greek city of Thessaloniki as its capital.

The concerns are further reinforced by the fact that extremist ethnic Macedonian nationalists of the "United Macedonia" movement have expressed irredentist claims to what they refer to as "Aegean Macedonia" (in Greece), "Pirin Macedonia" (in Bulgaria), "Mala Prespa and Golo Bardo" (in Albania), and "Gora and Prohor Pchinski" (in Serbia).

Greek Macedonians, Bulgarians, Albanians and Serbs form the overwhelming majority of the population of each part of the region respectively.

Schoolbooks and official government publications in the Republic have shown the country as part of an unliberated whole.

Professor Loring M. Danforth, reports the following:

Although all Macedonians agree that Macedonian minorities exist in Bulgaria and Greece and that these minorities have been subjected to harsh policies of forced assimilation, there are two different positions with regard to what their future should be. The goal of more extreme Macedonian nationalists is to create a "free, united, and independent Macedonia" by "liberating" the parts of Macedonia "temporarily occupied" by Bulgaria and Greece. More moderate Macedonian nationalists recognize the inviolability of the Bulgarian and Greek borders and explicitly renounce any territorial claims against the two countries. They do, however, demand that Bulgaria and Greece recognize the existence of Macedonian minorities in their countries and grant them the basic human rights they deserve.

And...

...Greek fears that use of the name "Macedonia" by Slavs will inevitably lead to the assertion of irredentist claims to territory in Greek Macedonia are heightened by fairly recent historical events. During World War II Bulgaria occupied portions of northern Greece, while one of the specific goals of the founders of the People's Republic of Macedonia in 1944 was "the unification of the entire Macedonian nation," to be achieved by "the liberation of the other two segments" of Macedonia.

Self-Determination

According to both the official Greek position and various public manifestations in Greece and the Greek diaspora, the Greek Macedonians feel that their right to self-determination is violated by what they regard as the monopolisation of their name by a neighbouring country.

The strong regional identity of the Macedonians was emphasized by the Prime Minister of Greece, Kostas Karamanlis, who in January 2007 during a meeting of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg declared that:

I myself am a Macedonian, and another two and a half million Greeks are Macedonians.

In Greece, the extreme position on the issue suggests that there must be "no Macedonia in the title" of a neighbouring country.

Professor Danforth reports:

From the Greek nationalist perspective, then, the use of the name "Macedonian" by the "Slavs of Skopje" constitutes a "felony," an "act of plagiarism" against the Greek people. By calling themselves "Macedonians" the Slavs are "stealing" a Greek name; they are "embezzling" Greek cultural heritage; they are "falsifying" Greek history. As Evangelos Kofos, a historian employed by the Greek Foreign Ministry told a foreign reporter, "It is as if a robber came into my house and stole my most precious jewels - my history, my culture, my identity".

More moderate positions suggest that a disambiguating element should be added to the name of the neighbouring state and its people (notably Slav- or Vardar or New), so as to illustrate the distinction between not just the two, but all groups of self-identifying Macedonians.

Semiological confusion

The contemporary region of Macedonia is a wider region in the Balkan peninsula that spans across several modern states, mainly Greece (Greek Macedonia), Bulgaria (Blagoevgrad province), the Republic of Macedonia (formerly Vardar Macedonia), and Albania (around Lake Ohrid). The definite borders of the region are vague, but most contemporary geographers agree on its general location. There are several ethnic groups in this region, mostly living within their respective states, all of which are technically Macedonians in the regional sense. The Republic itself, has a substantial minority (25.2%) of ethnic Albanians who are "Macedonians" both in the regional sense, and as legal citizens of the Republic.

The Greek position suggests that the monopolization of the name by the Republic and its citizens creates semiological confusion, as it becomes increasingly difficult to disambiguate which "Macedonia", which "Macedonians" and what "Macedonian language" are referred to in each occasion.

Bulgarians living in Blagoevgrad province (Bulgarian Macedonia) are reported to not self-identify with their regional term "Macedonians", so as not to be confused with the ethnic Macedonians.

Macedo-Romanians (Aromanians) are often called "Machedoni" by Romanians, as opposed to the citizens of Macedonia, who are called "Macedoneni".

The Greek Macedonians demonstrate a strong regional identity and self-identify as plain Macedonians, who live in plain Macedonia, speaking a Macedonian dialect of modern Greek.

The Macedonian (Greek) minority in the FYROM

There is a Macedonian (Greek) minority in what is now the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, a remnant of the formerly much larger indigenous Greek community of the wider region of Macedonia that fell within the borders of Serbia after the Balkan Wars of 1912-13. The official 2002 census figures cite a few hundred ethnic Greeks in the country, but it is unknown how many of these consider themselves to be of indigenous Macedonian origin. In addition, Greek sources suggest that the Vlach minority in the country which numbered 250,000 in 1994 are of Greek origin. According to Victor Roudometof, the majority of the Vlachs in the region have historically self-identified as Greeks.

Ethnic Macedonian position

Self-determination and self-identification

According to the official ethnic Macedonian position, the preservation of the constitutional name both for domestic and international use is of utmost importance. The country asserts that they do not lay exclusive claim to the term Macedonia neither in the geographic nor the historic sense.

Various demonstrations and protests in the Republic of Macedonia, Greece, and the ethnic Macedonian diaspora, the ethnic Macedonians feel that their right to self-determination is violated by what they regard as the rejection of the name from the Greeks and their country.

Professor Danforth reports:

According to the Greek nationalist position on the Macedonian Question, because Alexander the Great and the ancient Macedonians were Greeks, and because ancient and modern Greece are bound in an unbroken line of racial and cultural continuity, it is only Greeks who have the right to identify themselves as Macedonians, not the Slavs of southern Yugoslavia, who settled in Macedonia in the sixth century AD and who called themselves "Bulgarians" until 1944. Greeks, therefore, generally refer to Macedonians as "Skopians," (from Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia) a practice comparable to calling Greeks "Athenians." The negation of Macedonian identity in Greek nationalist ideology focuses on three main points: the existence of a Macedonian nation, a Macedonian language, and a Macedonian minority in Greece. From the Greek nationalist perspective there cannot be a Macedonian nation since there has never been an independent Macedonian state: the Macedonian nation is an "artificial creation," an "invention," of Tito, who "baptized" a "mosaic of nationalities" with the Greek name "Macedonians."

The ethnic Macedonian minority in Greece

In the 6th and 7th centuries AD Slavic-speaking populations overturned the Greek ethnic composition of the wider Macedonia region, and Slavic languages have been spoken in the area alongside Greek in the region ever since. In parts of northern Greece, in the regions of Macedonia (Μακεδονία) and Thrace (Θράκη), Slavonic languages continue to be spoken by people with a wide range of self-identifications. The actual linguistic classification of these dialects is unclear, although most linguists will classify them as either Bulgarian or Macedonian Slavic taking into account numerous factors, including the resemblance and mutual intelligibility of each dialect to the standard languages (abstand), and the self-identification of the speakers themselves. As however the vast majority of these people don't have a non-Greek national identity, linguists will make their decisions based on abstand alone. The Slavic-speaking minority of northern Greece can be divided in to two main groups: Christians and Muslims. The latter has no reported connection to ethnic Macedonians.

The Christian portion of Greece's Slavic-speaking minority are commonly referred to as Slavophones (from the Greek Σλαβόφωνοι Slavophōnoi - lit. Slavic-speakers) or Dopii, which means "locals" in Greek. The vast majority of them espouse a Greek national identity and are bilingual in Greek. They live mostly in the Periphery of Western Macedonia and belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, which in conjunction with the millet system of the Ottoman Empire which occupied the region until 1913, may explain their self-identification as Greeks. In the 1951 census, 41,017 people claimed to speak the Slavic language.

This group has received some attention in recent years due to claims from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia that these people form an ethnic Macedonian minority in Greece. Multiple organisations and scholars of history and anthropology have stated that there is a minority within the Slavophone community in Greece which self-identifies as ethnic Macedonian.

There is a dispute over the size of this alleged minority, with most Greeks denying it outright, and most ethnic Macedonians inflating the numbers substantially. The Greek Helsinki Monitor reports that, "difficult and therefore risky it is to declare a Macedonian minority identity in such an extremely hostile if not aggressive environment in Greece". There are no official statistics to confirm or deny either claims. The Greek government has thus far refused on the basis that there is no significant such community and that the idea of minority status is not popular amongst the (Greek identifying) linguistic community of northern Greece as it would have the effect of them being marginalized.

Professor Danforth reports:

...Finally, the Greek government denies the existence of a Macedonian minority in northern Greece, claiming that there exists only a small group of "Slavophone Hellenes" or "bilingual Greeks," who speak Greek and "a local Slavic dialect" but have a "Greek national consciousness".

A political party promoting this line and claiming rights of what they describe as the "Macedonian minority in Greece" - the Rainbow (Виножито) - was founded in September 1998; it received a minimal support of 2,955 votes in the region of Macedonia in the latest elections (2004).

Macedonian language

Macedonian (Slavic)

The name of the Macedonian language (Macedonian: македонски јазик - makedonski jazik) as used by the people and defined in the constitution of the Republic of Macedonia is "Macedonian" (Macedonian: македонски - makedonski). This is also the name used by international bodies, such as the United Nations and the World Health Organisation. The name is also used by convention in the field of Slavic Studies.

However, for historical reasons, as well as due to a naming dispute with Greece, several other terms of reference are used when describing or referring to the language. Some of the names use the family to which the language belongs to disambiguate it from the undoubtedly non-Slavic and entirely different ancient Macedonian language, or from the homonymous dialect of modern Greek; sometimes the autonym "Makedonski" is used in English for the modern Slavic language, with "Macedonian" being reserved for the ancient language.

Professor Loring M. Danforth, reports the following:

In addition to affirming the existence of the Macedonian nation, Macedonians are concerned with affirming the existence of a unique Macedonian language as well. While acknowledging the similarities between Macedonian and other South Slavic languages, they point to the distinctions that set it apart as a separate language. They also emphasize that although standard literary Macedonian was only formally created and recognized in 1944, the Macedonian language has a history of over a thousand years dating back to the Old Church Slavonic used by Sts. Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century.

Nevertheless, standard Macedonian is mutually intelligible with standard Bulgarian and until the late 1940s, all activists and leaders of the Macedonian movement, including the leftists, used standard Bulgarian in documents, press publications, correspondence and memoirs and nothing indicates they viewed it as a foreign language. This is characteristic even of the members of IMRO (United) well into the 1920's and 1930's, when the idea of a distinct Macedonian nation was taking shape.

Macedonian (modern Greek)

There is also a dialect of modern Greek called Macedonian, spoken by the Macedonians. Greek, including all its modern variations, is the closest living language to ancient Macedonian, and has no relation to the Slavic languages except for their mutual inclusion in the Indo-European family and the Balkan sprachbund.

Professor Loring M. Danforth, reports the following:

Similarly Greek nationalists claim that because the language spoken by the ancient Macedonians was Greek, the Slavic language spoken by the "Skopians" cannot be called "the Macedonian language." Greek sources generally refer to it as "the linguistic idiom of Skopje" and describe it as a corrupt and impoverished dialect of Bulgarian.

Macedonian (ancient)

The origins of the ancient Macedonian language are currently debated. It is as yet undetermined whether it was a Greek dialect which was part of or closely related to the Doric and/or Aeolic dialects, a sibling language of ancient Greek forming a Graeco-Macedonian or Hellenic supergroup, or an independent Indo-European language close to the Greek, Thracian and Phrygian languages. The scientific community generally agrees that, although some sources are available (e.g. Hesychius' lexicon, Pella curse tablet) there is no decisive evidence for supporting either hypothesis. Nevertheless, Attic Greek eventually supplanted it entirely in Macedonia, and ancient Macedonian became extinct during the first few centuries of the Common Era. Attic Greek evolved into Koine Greek and in turn into Byzantine and modern Greek.

See also

• Macedonia (region)
• Macedonia (terminology)

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101. Template:De icon Ahrens, F. H. L. (1843), De Graecae linguae dialectis, Göttingen, 1839-1843 ; Hoffmann, O. Die Makedonen. Ihre Sprache und ihr Volkstum, Göttingen, 1906
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103. Template:Fr icon Dubois L. (1995) Une tablette de malédiction de Pella : s'agit-il du premier texte macédonien ?, Revue des Études Grecques (REG) 108:190-197
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105. See Greek language.

• Geographical naming disputes