Do Greeks have the right to tell another country what to call itself and ban me saying MACEDONIA?

Question

Great Britian doesn't complain about about Britany or Holland New Zealand. Why do Greeks think they have copyright on MACEDONIA????

If Greeks want to call Macedonia by what they want they can. BUT why force their perversity on everybody else.
What right to they have from banning Macedonia from use it's proper name.Why should Greeks have right in the UN and EU to do this. Why do they try to force the US to use 'Fyrom' when the Americans want to address the country name that it wants to be called.
http://jscms.jrn.columbia.edu/cns/2007-02-13/rivkin-macedoniaresolutions


Would you be happy if Turks started forcing you to be called Former Ottoman Province of Greece?


If you are so fussed about the name Macedonia why not complain about the toen of MACEDONIA, OHIO
http://www.macedonia.oh.us/

Other countries have no problem with regions having similar names. Zaire changed it's name to Democratic Republic of Congo. It's neighbor Congo didn't conplain.

Greeks are been unreason. They delayed Macedonia's UN entry because of the name. They are trying to destroy Macedonian exsistance.

Greeks even bombed Macedonian churches after Austrlia recognised Macedonia by it's proper name. That is how fanatical they are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonia_naming_dispute#Controversy_and_conflict

LAST AMAZON: You forgot to quote the whole article.


****Lambert C. Boissiere Jr., a former state senator from Louisiana, sponsored the state’s 2003 resolution. Boissiere, who is now the constable of New Orleans, could offer no details of the region or the dispute"


and another Senator Sen. Phil Leventis of South Carolina, who proposed a 2005 resolution in his state supporting Greece's so called right to name other countries...
Thaought that "It’s all about the former Czechoslovakian area, the whole thing,” *****

LOL You biggest supporters in the US don't even know the difference between Yugoslavia and Czechoslavkia. Not very concerned about history.
Who is ignorant now?!!!!

Answer 1

NO THEY DON'T. This(about the city of Macedonia) only shows that they use the name as an excuse for something else.

Answer 2

There is a GAP of nearly 20 centuries between Alexander the Macedonian and 1912 when first Greek armies step for the first time in occupied Aegean Macedonia.Never before Macedonia has ever been under Greek control. On contrary, Greece was ruled under Macedonia. They were completely different ethnicity's. After Macedonian fall under Rome Greeks went to live on the islands and Asia Minor (read "Monemvasia Chronicles"). After that Slavs occupied whole Balkans and changed completely the ethnically core of the population. There are not evidences or artifacts that Slavs did genocide over native Macedonians, but they mixed with. All toponimes in Macedonia are Slav until 1912. Because that people felt like Macedonians since 6th century , they call that language Macedonian. There were not Greeks there since 1912. The new Greek state first step that overtaken was to change the toponimes from Macedonian into Greek language.

Answer 3

The F.Y.R.O.M issue is pretty hard to resolve. Macedonia was a great region that extended from Greece to FYROM to Bulgaria. Macedonia was a region in the Balkans; mostly within Hellenic lands but never the less Balkan. However, the Bulgarians who also had a name problem, called their old-Macedonia region Bulgarian Macedonia. Which is a pretty fair name. So I would have to agree with the Greeks and say that Slavic Macedonia would be the best name to call the country since it really is the Slavic Macedonian region. Please do tell me if I am wrong. However, i think that the real problem has to do with cultural heritage, mostly. The Greeks feel offended because for centuries the symbol of Hellenic Macedonia was the "Macedonian Sun" and FYROM later on made a novel replica of the symbol. But even worse are the claims to Alexander's III heritage. Having a leader in your nations history called Great isn't a little thing. Therefore i believe that it is just for the Greeks to demand claims. Don't you agree? If you don't please do give me an answer, because i have been concerned about this matter for a long time and i would love to hear a different opinion.

Answer 4

First of all you are comparing totally different situations...

Secondly you MUST go read a few history books before posting Qs like that

Thirdly think of what your "friends" Americans did to your country some years ago

Fourthly if you really thought of the question about Turks and Former Ottoman Empire then you are in so deep need of opening a history book... For your information Turks was a race coming from somewhere around Mongolia and found greeks living there at around 1200AC when Greeks have been living there from like ...ever!

I mean God... Arent there schools and history books in your ...Macedonia? I mean do you really feel like you got the guts, knowledge and culture to even think of claiming such name for your country???

Just get hold of yourself honey... Whatever you do even if you copy the name, you cannot copy history, culture, or anything...
I mean what has your Macedonia offered to this world?
Plz name something... PLZ ....

Do your homework next time you post a Q, and do think first and then speak...

Oh... And guess what... REPORTEDDDD!!!! :)

Answer 5

Honestly, I'm not knowledgable about this issue.
I just want to say that one of your analogies are inconsistent

Britain and Holland, New Zealand is not the same as the issue with Greece and Macedonia. New Zealand is a place that was once colonized, and a city has kept the name. Macedonia and Greece have a totally different story going on.

Answer 6

Usurping a name is one thing, Usurping and fabricating history is another. The Neo-Macedonian Slavs could call their country Nova Macedonia or some such derivative. But to project the notion that they have Macedonian ancestry is pattently and historically FALSE.

Answer 7

The names of people and countries are a question of common consent, not of a single wish. A person is normally given a name.

In your case the name is not just a denomination - it is a claim on history and even territory.

The issue would not be so serious if the official position of the Republic of Macedonia (see, I accept the name) did not build present Macedonian identity on Alexander the Great, his father Fillip and the great heritage of ancient Macedonia. The claim on history is in every newspaper in the Republic of Macedonia and in every news broadcast, definitely in every school history textbook. You can not deny this, can you?

In this sense the Greeks are in fact defending their history and territory. Look at the RM webpages - everywhere there is a map of the ''original'' Macedonia, saying "this is the land they stole from us and which belongs to us". What does it mean, if not educating the population of the country into hatred for its neighbours!

In this line of thought - why are major Bulgarian history figures proclaimed "Macedonian": the medieval Bulgarian Tsar Samuil (Bulgarian according also to contemporary Greek sources), the Miladinovi brothers (who published "Bulgarian Folk Tales"), Parlichev and many, many 19th c. history figures, who wrote explicitly about their Bulgarian identity.

My own great grand father was a Bulgarian from present day Aegean Macedonia in Greece - and he was part of the national liberation Ilinden uprising. He knew what he risked his life for and he had no doubts about his own and his fellow komiti identity.

Why in the autonomous Macedonia within Tito's Yugoslavia the so called "Macedonian National Honor Act" was in force, according to which professing a Bulgarian national identity (but nor Serbian, Albanian, or other) was punished by 3 to 5 years of jail? The Act was in force until as late as 1991 and this is fact!

Now, Bulgaria has settled all its disputes with Greece and has no territorial or any other claims to it. Joint Bulgarian-Greek projects have resulted in a monument of Fillip in the center of ancient Fillipopolis (present day Plovdiv in Bulgaria) and museum representation of ancient Greek colonies on the Black Sea. Why is this impossible between RM and Greece?

Don't get me wrong - I do not question the statehood and the present identity of the people living in RM. But we share a common history (as well as with Greece and Turkey) and this should be respected. History is history - "good" or "bad" you can not change it.

The important thing is not to use it to educate a whole nation into hating its closest neighbors, feeling superior to them and acting in an unpleasant hostile way.

Accept what you are and you'll be stronger - to the benefit of yourself mostly and to the benefit of all of us - your neighbors.
Zhivi i zdravi, s naistina naj-dobri pozhelanija!

Answer 8

Many people above have answered you with a lots of talking points.I agree with almost everyone.
But you do nothing to change your mind.
And what is your exact question?I believe that you only want to make a statement.
By the way,great name you have!

Answer 9

You should be wiser and not try to dispute the name that Greeks use for their province for thousands of years. By doing so you appear ignorant and uneducated.
I am including a short copy as part of your article you referred us to in your question:

" The state resolutions have mostly slipped through without notice, but not Boissiere’s in Louisiana. In a June 15, 2003, editorial, “It’s All Greek to Them,” the Times-Picayune of New Orleans wrote that Boissiere had inserted the Louisiana Legislature into “one of the world’s most absurd and pointless international disputes.’”
Boissiere fired off a response to the paper. “I am shocked by the callousness you show toward a matter that is of extreme significance and importance to these honorable Greek-American citizens,” Boissiere wrote before concluding, “Long live Macedonia, a Greek province!”"

If you still think you have claims in the area and you need to challenge us,I only have one word for you and all your compatriots:
Molon lave!!

I do not need to include anything else, I quote what I think is relevant from the article. If there was a slip of the tongue in someone's speech, let it be.
Just FYI the Americans were the only ones who recognized your country. To make fun of them and Bush, fits you fine, you show to the world how little appreciation you have for the help you received in the past.
Let's hope the US president will not repeat his mistake he made by recognizing your country.

Answer 10

Do you always whine this much ? Get a life. I wish Greece could pull out all finacial means out of Yougoslavia. you know- just as a riminder " thau shall not badmouth the big brothers and sisters"! and honestly ,your history doesn't interest me - at all - but you are what you are and that is

(((((((((((((((NOT GREEK)))))))))))))))))

OH YEAH, AND BEFORE I FORGET I REPORTED YOU

have a nice day

Answer 11

Yes, they do. Here is a quote by "THE NEW YORKER" magazine , January 23, 1995:


“FYROM was a province of Yugoslavia once known as Vardar Banovina; it was renamed the ‘Republic of Macedonia’ in 1945 by Marshal Tito. Its populace was varied, the largest portion being Slavs, whose ancestors had arrived in the region nearly a thousand years after the most famous Macedonians of all, Phillip II and his son, Alexander the Great. However, Tito--coveting the large Greek region of Macedonia--encouraged the irredentist idea of all ‘Macedonians' sharing a distinct ethnic identity. He then supported the Communist-led Democratic Army in the Greek Civil War, a brutal conflict that tore the country from 1946 to 1949. Greece's fears were reawakened in 1991, when the fragment of Yugoslavia declared its independence as the nation of ‘Macedonia’; its newly elected President, Kiro Gligorov, was one of Tito's Communist bosses, and had helped propagate the idea of a separate ethnic identity for ‘Macedonians’. Gligorov says that his ‘Macedonia’ has no territorial ambitions, but the Greeks have not been comforted. In 1992 and 1993, Gligorov's government issued new school textbooks that showed "geographical ethnic boundaries" encompassing the whole of Greek Macedonia; the country's flag carries the symbol of the empire of Alexander the Great; and a preamble to its 1991 Constitution pledges to protect ‘Macedonians’ everywhere. The Greeks do not pretend that the Lilliputian ‘Macedonia’, with its two million people, poses any threat to them at the moment, but history has taught them to take the long view. In a scenario that some Greeks project, for example, ‘Macedonians’ might some day attempt a hostile incursion, in concert with their fellow-Slavs in Bulgaria, which occupied part of Greece during the Second World War.”