The name Macedonia is used in a number of competing or overlapping meanings to describe geographical, political and historical areas, languages and peoples in a part of south-eastern Europe. It has been a major source of political controversy since the early 20th century. The situation is complicated because different ethnic groups use different terminology for the same entity, or the same terminology for different entities, with different political connotations.

Historically, the region has presented markedly shifting borders across the Balkan peninsula. Geographically, no single definition of its borders or the names of its subdivisions is accepted by all scholars and ethnic groups. Demographically, it is mainly inhabited by four ethnic groups, three of which self-identify as Macedonians: two, a Bulgarian and a Greek one at a regional level, while a third ethnic Macedonian one at a national level. Linguistically, the names and affiliations of languages and dialects spoken in the region are a source of controversy. Politically, the rights to the extent of the use of the name Macedonia and its derivatives has led to a diplomatic dispute between Greece and the then-Republic of Macedonia, now North Macedonia. After using the provisional reference of the "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" (FYROM), Greece and the then-Republic of Macedonia reached an agreement that the latter would change its official name to Republic of North Macedonia. It came into effect on 12 February 2019.

Etymology The name Macedonia derives from the Greek (),Μακεδονία, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus a kingdom (later, region) named after the ancient Macedonians, from the Greek (), 'Macedonians', explained as having originally meant either 'the tall ones' or 'highlanders'. The word () is first attested in Herodotus as the name which the Greek ethnos was called (which was later called Dorian) when it settled around Pindus mountain range.Herodotus, Histories, 1.56.2,3: "ταῦτα γὰρ ἦν τὰ προκεκριμένα, ἐόντα τὸ ἀρχαῖον τὸ μὲν Πελασγικὸν τὸ δὲ Ἑλληνικὸν ἔθνος. καὶ τὸ μὲν οὐδαμῇ κω ἐξεχώρησε, τὸ δὲ πολυπλάνητον κάρτα. ἐπὶ μὲν γὰρ Δευκαλίωνος βασιλέος οἴκεε γῆν τὴν Φθιῶτιν, ἐπὶ δὲ Δώρου τοῦ Ἕλληνος τὴν ὑπὸ τὴν Ὄσσαν τε καὶ τὸν Ὄλυμπον χώρην, καλεομένην δὲ Ἱστιαιῶτιν: ἐκ δὲ τῆς Ἱστιαιώτιδος ὡς ἐξανέστη ὑπὸ Καδμείων, οἴκεε ἐν Πίνδῳ Μακεδνὸν καλεόμενον: ἐνθεῦτεν δὲ αὖτις ἐς τὴν Δρυοπίδα μετέβη καὶ ἐκ τῆς Δρυοπίδος οὕτω ἐς Πελοπόννησον ἐλθὸν Δωρικὸν ἐκλήθη." is related to the Ancient Greek adjective (), meaning 'tall, slim',μακεδνός, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus attested in Homer and Hesychius of Alexandria in its feminine form (), meaning 'long, tall'.Homer, Odyssey, 7.106Hesychii Alexandrini lexicon It is cognate with the words (, 'long, large')μακρός, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus and (, 'length'),μήκος, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus both deriving from the Indo-European root , meaning 'long, slender'.*mak-, Etymonline Linguist Robert S. P. Beekes claims that both terms are of Pre-Greek substrate origin and cannot be explained in terms of Indo-European morphology; however, De Decker argues the arguments are insufficient.

History

The region of Macedonia has been home to several historical political entities, which have used the name Macedonia; the main ones are given below. The borders of each of these entities were different.

Early history Ancient Macedonia

Macedonia or Macedon, the ancient kingdom, was located on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, and later became the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. It was centered on the fertile plains west of the Gulf of Salonica (today north-western Greece); the first Macedonian state emerged in the 8th or early 7th century BC. Its extent beyond the center varied; some Macedonian kings could not hold their capital; Philip II expanded his power until it reached from Epirus, across Thrace to Gallipoli, and from Thermopylae to the Danube. His son Alexander the Great conquered most of the land in southwestern Asia stretching from what is currently Turkey in the west to parts of India in the east. However, while Alexander's conquests are of major historical importance as having launched the Hellenistic Age, Macedon as a state had no significant territorial gains due to them. Alexander's kingdom fell apart after his death in 323 BC; several of his Successors attempted to form a kingdom for themselves in Macedonia; the kingdom formed by Antigonus Gonatas contained all the land Philip II had started with and controlled much of what is now modern Greece; it lasted until the Romans divided it into four republics in 168 BC.

Roman Macedonia

The ancient Romans had two different entities called Macedonia, at different levels. Macedonia was established as a Roman province in 146 BC. Its boundaries were shifted from time to time for administrative convenience, but during the Roman Republic and the Principate it extended west to the Adriatic and south to Central Greece.

Under Diocletian, Thessaly, including parts of West Macedonia, was split off to form a new province, and the central and southern Balkan provinces were grouped into the Diocese of Moesia. At some point in the 4th century (first securely attested in 370) this was divided into two new dioceses, the mostly Latin-speaking Diocese of Dacia in the north and the mostly Greek-speaking Diocese of Macedonia in the south. Under Constantine the Great, the western part of the province of Macedonia was also split off to form the new province of Epirus nova. After Constantine's death, the western Balkans, Macedonia included, became part of the praetorian prefecture of Illyricum.

With the exception of a short-lived division between Macedonia Prima in the south and Macedonia Salutaris in the north towards the end of the 4th century (attested only in the ), Macedonia formed a single province until re-divided into southern and northern parts sometime in the late 5th century (the division is first securely attested in 482), although the province seems to have been reunified by 535. According to the 6th-century Synecdemus, Macedonia Prima, with Thessalonica as its capital and governed by a consularis, counted 32 cities, and Macedonia Secunda in the north, with Stobi as its capital and governed by a praeses, only eight. The approximate boundary between the two ran on a rough line from north of Bitola (which belonged to Macedonia Prima) to the area of Demir Kapija.

Byzantine Macedonia

During the 7th century, most of the Balkans were overrun by Slavic invasions, which left only the fortified towns and the coasts in the hands of the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire. "Macedonia" was then used for a new theme in the late 8th century under Irene of Athens. Geographically however it was located in Thrace and not in Macedonia, which was under the themes of Thessalonica, Strymon and other smaller commands such as Boleron or Drougoubiteia. Themes were not named geographically and the original sense was "army". They became districts during the military and fiscal crisis of the seventh century, when the Byzantine armies were instructed to find their supplies from the locals, wherever they happened to be. Thus the Armeniac theme was considerably west of Armenia; the Thracesian Theme was in Asia Minor, not in Thrace. The Macedonian dynasty of the Byzantine Empire acquired its name from its founder, Basil I the Macedonian, an Armenian by descent, who was born in the theme of Macedonia.

The interior of Macedonia remained in Slavic and later Bulgarian hands until the campaigns of Basil II, which ended the existence of the Bulgarian state and extended Byzantine authority across the central and northern Balkans. Thereafter Macedonia remained under Byzantine control until the Fourth Crusade (1204). A short-lived Latin Kingdom of Thessalonica was established which survived until 1224, when it was captured by Epirus. Most of Macedonia then came under the control of the Empire of Nicaea in 1246, although its northern regions remained disputed with the Serbs and the Bulgarians. Most of the region was conquered by the Serbs under Stephen Dushan during the Byzantine civil war of 1341–1347. Only Thessalonica and its environs remained in Byzantine hands. By the late 14th century, the Ottoman Turks in turn had conquered the region, although Thessalonica held out under Byzantine and later Venetian control until 1430.

Ottomans and geographical Macedonia

The Ottomans did not keep Macedonia as an administrative unit:The region was not called "Macedonia" by the Ottomans, and the name "Macedonia" gained currency together with the ascendance of rival nationalism. Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question, Victor Roudometof, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, , p. 89. since 1864 parts of geographical Macedonia lay in three vilayets, which also comprised some non-Macedonian areas. The northern part was the Kosovo vilayet and then of Skopje; the Thessaloniki (south), and the Monastir Vilayet (western) were also created. This administrative division lasted until 1912–13, when Macedonia was divided among the Balkan states. In April 1903, by Sultan's decree, the term "Macedonia" was banned in all forms of official and private usage. In June 1903, the Ottoman authorities requested from the American Bible Society to replace the term "Macedonia" in the New Testament with the "vilayets of Salonica and Monastir".

Modern history

Since the early stages of the Greek Revolution, the provisional government of Greece claimed Macedonia as part of Greek national territory, but the Treaty of Constantinople (1832), which established a Greek independent state, set its northern boundary between Arta and Volos. When the Ottoman Empire started breaking apart, Macedonia was claimed by all members of the Balkan League (Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Bulgaria), and by Romania. Under the Treaty of San Stefano that ended the Russo-Turkish War, 1877–78 the entire region, except Thessaloniki, was included in the borders of Bulgaria, but after the Congress of Berlin in 1878 the region was returned to the Ottoman Empire. The armies of the Balkan League advanced and occupied Macedonia in the First Balkan War in 1912. Because of disagreements between the allies about the partition of the region, the Second Balkan War erupted, and in its aftermath the arbitrary region of Macedonia was split into the following entities, that existed or still exist in this region: Macedonia (as a region of Greece) refers to three regions in northern Greece, incorporated in 1913, as a result of the Balkan Wars between the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan League. Macedonia (as a People's Republic within Yugoslavia) used to refer to the People's Republic of Macedonia established in 1946, later known as the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, one of the constituent republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, renamed in 1963. Between 1929 and 1941 this region was part of Vardar Banovina province in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Macedonia (as a recent sovereign state) referred to the conventional short form name of the Republic of Macedonia, after the aforementioned Socialist Republic held a referendum and established its independence from Yugoslavia on 8 September 1991. On 12 February 2019 the name of the state was changed to Republic of North Macedonia following the ratification of the Prespa agreement negotiated with Greece, thus settling the Macedonia naming dispute.

Geography