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Macedonia Agrees to Change Its Name to End Bitter Dispute with Greece

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Re: Macedonia Agrees to Change Its Name to End Bitter Dispute with Greece

#81

Post by ap3 »

abnry wrote: post #68
dghughes wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is always unpopular but, how about the name America? I refer to the country south of me as "the US" or "the USA". To me as a Canadian I live in the Americas so I could be an American. Growing up nobody I knew called the US "America" you'd even hear "the Boston States", I have no clue how that originated. But I've noticed over the past decade or two it's become more common for people in the US to refer to…

To be fair, the USA is the only country with America in it's name. And what would you call people who live in the United States other than Americans? Hop, skip and a jump to calling the place Americans live America.

Estadounidenses

Re: Macedonia Agrees to Change Its Name to End Bitter Dispute with Greece

#82

Post by Khaine »

pavlov wrote: post #63
mkempe wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there three other "Massachusetts"-named states bordering the current Massachusetts? [edit] Maine is not called "North Massachusetts". As for your belief that European borders are unrelated to ethnic/cultural distinctions, do you know much about Europe? [edit: blocked from replying] Were there truly no pre-19th century differences between the peoples and cultures in Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia? and no-pre…

Ok, I'll try to reply to your 'edit3' examples. In my mind Finland and France are examples of European countries that have pretended very hard at some point in their history to be single-ethnicity nation states counter to how the actual population sees themselves. France is named after the Franks, but if you went back in time to 1700 and asked random people within the country's boundaries the question "What's your et…

Thats because nationalism didn't really rise until the 1800s. It was the French Revolution that drove a unity of the French people, and it was Napoleon's French soldiers, and the writings of the revolution that seeded nationalism across most of Europe.

Re: Macedonia Agrees to Change Its Name to End Bitter Dispute with Greece

#83

Post by conmarap »

chadash wrote: post #6

This is pay-walled, but here's a summary: The country we now call "Macedonia" (i.e. The Republic of Macedonia) was formed in 1991 after Yugoslavia broke up. Greece didn't like the name, because "Macedonia" was already the name of a large region in Northern Greece. This would be similar to a region of Quebec bordering the US breaking away from Canada and calling itself Maine. Some Greeks apparently felt that the Repub…

It doesn't only imply territorial claims over Greece's region, but also the history of the ancient Greek Macedonia, Alexander the great and so forth, which is clearly part of the Hellenic history. Besides publishing official maps that depicted the region of Thessaloniki as a region of their country that was occupied by Greece, they also bluntly used Greek symbols, texts and even antiquities to further their propaganda. This is a far more complicated problem than simply just a naming issue.

Re: Macedonia Agrees to Change Its Name to End Bitter Dispute with Greece

#84

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dghughes wrote: post #53
pavlov wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of Maine, you can find a better analogy at the opposite end of the United States. There’s a Mexican state named Baja California and a US state named simply California. Exact same thing as this Macedonia business.

I know this is always unpopular but, how about the name America? I refer to the country south of me as "the US" or "the USA". To me as a Canadian I live in the Americas so I could be an American. Growing up nobody I knew called the US "America" you'd even hear "the Boston States", I have no clue how that originated. But I've noticed over the past decade or two it's become more common for people in the US to refer to…

The official name of the country is The United States Of America. But that's too long for day-to-day use, so we need a shorter name. What do you want us to use?

America? We get all these howls of protest, but what do you like better?

United States? To call us that has the same problem. It's kind of unfair to the United Mexican States, don't you think?

That leaves "The" and "Of". But we can't call ourselves those, because of The Dominion Of Canada.

The short name for The United States Of America is "America". It just is. And we don't particularly care whether you like it or not.

"The Boston states", if I understand correctly, does not refer to the entirety of the USA, but only to New England (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut - the states that center on Boston).

Re: Macedonia Agrees to Change Its Name to End Bitter Dispute with Greece

#86

Post by conmarap »

Keyframe wrote: post #31
chadash wrote: post #6

This is pay-walled, but here's a summary: The country we now call "Macedonia" (i.e. The Republic of Macedonia) was formed in 1991 after Yugoslavia broke up. Greece didn't like the name, because "Macedonia" was already the name of a large region in Northern Greece. This would be similar to a region of Quebec bordering the US breaking away from Canada and calling itself Maine. Some Greeks apparently felt that the Repub…

Not the greatest analogy, considering both the greek region and the republic were both part of ancient kingdom of Macedonia, and neither modern instance has (much of) any continuity link to ancient Macedonia. I was there last year. It's a great country to visit as a tourist. There are much political issues still at large there. With Greece, there's that dispute over who has 'the right' to Macedonia. IMO, neither. The…

Greece didn't exist as a united country, but for Alexander the Great, who spent his school years in Athens, and tried to unite all Greek states into one Hellenic country, yes, the history belongs to the Greeks and not a Slavic tribe that found itself in the region 900 years later. Not to mention that they were given a written language by the Greeks of the Byzantine empire.

Re: Macedonia Agrees to Change Its Name to End Bitter Dispute with Greece

#87

Post by miopa »

chadash wrote: post #6

This is pay-walled, but here's a summary: The country we now call "Macedonia" (i.e. The Republic of Macedonia) was formed in 1991 after Yugoslavia broke up. Greece didn't like the name, because "Macedonia" was already the name of a large region in Northern Greece. This would be similar to a region of Quebec bordering the US breaking away from Canada and calling itself Maine. Some Greeks apparently felt that the Repub…

(Peoples) Republic of Macedonia was formed on August 2, 1944, as federal unit in Yugoslavia, hence the provisional name Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. In 1991 independence was declared, but the only real change was loss of economic integration and military protection.

There was (is) a substantial ethnic (Slavic) minority in the Greek park of Macedonia that identified themselves as Macedonians, which was treated pretty terribly by the right wing Greek authorities after the Balkan Wars: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/greece-apos-macedonian-slavic-heri... (My father was not allowed to visit his birthplace in the Greek part of Macedonia because his Yugoslav passport had the slavic name of the town).

It is this issue that is the real reason for the dispute, not Ancient Macedonia. The serious Macedonian academic institutions (and almost all of the people that I know) don't claim that we have any cultural relation with them.

Re: Macedonia Agrees to Change Its Name to End Bitter Dispute with Greece

#88

Post by miopa »

interdrift wrote: post #47
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9

I have been to Northern Greece. I have friends from Macedonia. This is the stupidest international dispute I think our reality can support.

No, it's not as stupid as you might think. FYROM was part of Bulgaria for a very long time. Lots of history of the empires happend there, they claim that it's theirs. Same for Alexander Macedon(he's obviously greek). If you claim some identity in front of many people you must be able to support it otherwise you end up looking like a fool. Imagine a nation of such deluded by the system people.

Modern Greeks have as much in common with Alexander as anybody else here. There are many historic clues that the ancient Greeks didn't understand the ancient Macedonian language, and that the Macedonians coudn't figure out how to write their language with the Greek alphabet, so they gradually (but not fully) adopted the Greek.

Re: Macedonia Agrees to Change Its Name to End Bitter Dispute with Greece

#90

Post by russellbeattie »

dgut wrote: post #71
russellbeattie wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The terms America and Americans have been used for hundreds of years, not just the last decade or two. I've had this same conversation with Mexicans and people from South America. The U.S. was the first independent country in the Americas recognized by foreign countries and remained the only one for many years. The term American had been used by the British for years to refer to the colonies, and was adopted by the c…

It's irrelevant what Washington or anybody else said. The common name for the North and South American landmasses is America (note: not Americas). The land between Canada and Mexico has no more rights to that name than the rest of the continent (or continents, depending on what model you prefer). Abroad, Hollywood has popularized the use of "American" to refer to citizens of the USA. Also, most languages don't have a…

The quote isn't irrelevant to the comment I was responding to, it was an example of its usage hundreds of years ago, loooong before Hollywood. Like I said above, it's a historical artifact, not some brazen attempt at linguistic hegemony.

(Sorry, but the Americas is what the continents are called normally - in English at least - did you just make up a new rule? There's even a Wikipedia entry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas)

Regardless, the name for Americans isn't changing any time soon, so I wouldn't get worked up about it. Besides, we are Americans in the most pedantic use of the term - if the Canadians, Mexicans and anyone else in this hemisphere wants to call themselves Americans too, they can go right ahead. They'll just seem petty and silly though.

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