Slavomacedonian male names of FYROM-Skopje

The Slavs begun arriving in the south Balkans sometime around the end of the 6th and the beginning of the seventh century AD.
A well orchestrated attempt is being propagated out of Skopje to portray the Slavic presence in Macedonia as eternal, going back to the ancient Macedonians, who were a Greek tribe, and to the Paionians who were an ethno-linguistic group akin to the Greeks. Their theory is that the Slavs are Macedonians, not the Slavomacedonians Slavs, and that the original Slavic homeland was not in the Pripjet marches of Byelorussia and Ukraine but in Macedonia. This, obviously has no bearing on history, archaeology and forensic linguistics and it makes a travesty out of everything that is commonly accepted by the academic community world wide.
A famous or infamous proponent of pseudomacedonism is Mr. Aleksandar Donski, a self proclaimed "professor of History". He has written numerous books or should we call them propaganda treatises, where his repeating motto is that the modern Slavomacedonians, the Slavonic speaking "Slavomakedonci" of FYROM are the autochthonous Macedonians who have saved in their language many of the names of the ancient Macedonians.
In a series of articles under the general title: "Macedonian names and MakeDONSKI pseudo-linguistics, we have time and again uncovered the faulty shallowness of these claims that cannot hold their own against any serious attempt to disprove them. Whenever History is replaced by propaganda, the people against whom propaganda is directed are on the losing side, intellectually and otherwise.
A crime has been committed against the people of the former Yugoslav Republic of Makedonija, a crime of the BIG LIE against their own self identity. This may sound like a harsh statement, but it is precise. What makes this BIG LIE more unacceptable is not that is merely portrays a false self image on the people of FYROM, which is bad enough in itself. What complicates the Macedonian name issue is that by adopting a false identity, the pseudomacedonian Skopjans want to elevate what was the fringe of the ancient Macedonian kingdom (and barely qualifies as Macedonian geographically and historically) and pass it as Macedonia proper, denying the Macedonian identity from the Macedonian Greeks who have all the reasons of history and language supporting them.
What is even more reprehensible is that by adopting a pseudo-Macedonian identity, the Skopians then turn and "demand" the liberation of the rest of "their" Macedonia. Irredentism, based on true or fake "historic rights" is what makes the volatile Balkans flare up into eruptions of hatred and killing from time to time. The use of Balkan ethnic hatred by "outsiders" as it happened during the 1990's break up of Yugoslavia, is what fuels the outlandish demands of Albanian Kossovar-Tetovar and Slavomacedonian-Skopian ultra-nationalism. They can see that "anything" is possible, even the capture of Thessaloniki, Greece's million strong, second largest city as a capital of a Slavonic "Makedonija".
In this light, pseudo-scientists in the pay of Skopian propaganda, characters of the type of Aleksandar Donski, Aristotel Tendov and Tome Boshevski among others, do not seem as ludicrous as they firstly appear, but their pseudo-macedonism takes on its truly sinister irredentist flavor.
In this article we will not try to disprove the alleged "Slavic" character of some ancient Greek or Thracian name in Donski's pseudo-Macedonian candy box. We will instead look at the true character of the modern Slavomacedonian male names and what they tell us about the true identity of the Slavic speaking inhabitants of FYROM.
In the 1996 "Orthodox Calendar", published by the Synod of the so called "Macedonian Orthodox Church" we find the following list of male names used in FYROM.
It is inappropriately misnamed (something to be expected in this misnamed country)
"Macedonian names of Biblical Origin". As we will show, there is very little "Macedonian" and very little "Biblical" in the names below.
What is a "Macedonian name? Are we to call Macedonian names the names that appear in ancient Macedonian history, after the Greek-speaking Macedonians conquered this land sometime around 800-750 BC? If this is a proper description, then Macedonian names, are all the names that appear in the literary, historical and epigraphical record of ancient Macedonia, since this is the Greek tribe that gave their name to this land. Over ninety five percent of these names are Greek, with some Paionian and some Thracian names appearing here and there. The vast majority of these names appear in every other dialect of Greek speaking areas around the Hellenic speaking world. Are the names Alexandros and Philippos and Aristoteles "Macedonian" names? While the most famous persons carrying these names are unquestionably Greeks of Macedonia, these names also appear as everyday Greek names in every other part of Greece, and the Hellenic speaking world and not only in Macedonia. Ptolemaios, Antiochos, Hephestion, Lysimachos are not names exclusive to the Hellenic-speaking Macedonians.
With the arrival of the Romans, initially and with the Slavs, the Albanians and the Turks in Macedonia much later on, their Latin, Slavonic, Albanian and Turkish or Arabic names arrive in Macedonia with them. Should these names now be re-named "Macedonian"? My position is that if we are to be scientific and precise then we must properly call these names "Roman, Slavic, Albanian or Turkish names common in Macedonia" at such and such time period.
The names of the ancient Macedonians were as Greek as any Peloponnesian, Thessalian, Ionian or Sicilian Greek name with some names being exclusively used in their dialect, which is something common to all other Greeks but also to all spoken and live languages around the world.
Biblical names, are names that appear in the bible, and as such are traditionally called the names that are Hebrew in origin. The New Testament, besides Hebrew has several Greek names and some Roman names too. Hebrew names start appearing in Macedonia with the arrival of Christianity in the first century AD and this is well documented in the funerary epigraphical record. This is also the time that the Thracian names start fading away and eventually they disappear by the 4th c AD with only ancient Greek and Christian (Greek, Latin and Hebrew) names surviving.
Let us now look into this list of names common among the Slavomakedonci and see how "Macedonian" they are. We classify these names according to the original linguistic pool from which they are derived.

A
Avakum Avram Adam Agapij Aleksandar
Alimpij Atanas Angel Angelarij Andon
Andrej Angjelko Antim Antonij Apostol
Ariton Arsenij Artemij Arhangle Atanasij
HB: Avakum, Avram/Abraham and Adam are indeed Biblical/Hebrew names (3/20).
LN: Andon and Antonij are Roman names, from Antonius (2/20).
GK: Agapij/Agapios, Aleksandar/Alexandros, Alimpij/olympios, Atanas/Athanasios, Angel/Aggelos, Angelarij/Angelos, Andrej/Andreas, Angjelko/Angelos, Antim/Antimachos, Apostol/Apostolos, Ariton/Ariston, Arsenij/Arsenios, Artemij/Artemios, Arhangle/Archangelos and Atanasij/Athanasios are all Greek names (15/20.

B
Blagoj Blagun Blazhe Bogatin Bogdan
Bogoja Bogoljub Bogomil Bogoslav Bozhidar
Bozhin Bojan Boris Boshko Branimir
Branslav Branko
SL: Blagoj, Blagun, Blazhe, Bogatin, Bogdan, Bogoja, Bogoljub, Bogomil, Bogoslav, Bozhidar, Bozhin, Bojan, Boris, Boshko, Branimir, Branslav, Branko are all Slavonic names, without exception (17/17).

V
Vangel Varnava Vasil Veljan Venijamin
Veselin Vidoe Vikentij Vladimir Vlastimir
HB: Venijamin/Benjamin and Varnava are indeed Biblical/Herbrew (2/10).
LN: Vikentij/Vikentius is Roman (1/10).
SL: Veljan, Veselin, Vidoe, Vladimir and Vlastimir are Slavonic names (5/10).
GK: Vangel/Evangelos, Vasil/Basileios are Greek (2/10).

G Gavril Georgij Gerasim Gligor Gligorij
Gorazd Goran Gorjan Goce Grigor
Grigorij Grozdan
HB: Gavril is Hebrew (1/12).
SL: Gorazd, Goran, Gorjan, Goce, Grozdan are Slavonic (5/12).
GK: Georgij/Georgios, Gerasim/Gerasimos, and Gligor, Gligorij, Grigor, Grigorij, all four of which are derived from Grigorios are Greek names (6/12).

D David Damaskin Damjan Danail Dejan
Deljan Despot Dimitar Dimitrij Diogen
Dobre Dojchin Doksim Doncho Dorotej
Dragan Dukdin Dushan
HB David and Danail are Hebrew/Biblical names (2/18).
SL Dejan, Deljan, Dobre, Dojchin, Doncho, Dragan, Dukdin and Dushan are Slavonic (8/18).
Gk Damaskin/Damaskinos, Damjan/Damianos, Despot/Despotes, Dimitar/Demetrios, Dimitrij/Demetrios, Diogen/Diogenes, Doksim/Eudoxios and Dorotej/Dorotheos are Greek names (8/18).

GJ GJerasim GJero GJoko GJore GJoshe
GJorgjija GJorche GJuro GJurchin GJurshin
HB: GJoshe/Joseph is Hebrew (1/10).
GK: GJerasim/Gerasimos, GJero/Ieron, GJoko/Georgios, GJore/Georgios, GJorgjija/Georgia, GJorche/Georgios, GJuro/Georgios and GJurchin/Georgios are Greek (9/10).


E Evgenij Elisie Erazmo Eremija Efimij
Emanuel
HB: Elisie, Eremija and Elisie are Hebrew/Biblical names (3/6).
GK: Evgenij/Eugenios, Erazmo/Erasmios and Efimij/Euthymios are Greek (3/6).


ZH ZHarko ZHelimir ZHivko ZHivorad
SL: ZHarko, ZHelimir, ZHivko and ZHivorad are Slavonic (4/4).

Z Zafir Zaharie Zdravko Zlatan Zlatko
Zograf Zoran
HB: Zaharie (1/7).
SL: Zdravko, Zlatan, Zlatko and Zoran are Slavonic (5/7).
GK: Zograf/Zographos (1/7).

DZ DZvezdan DZvonko
SL: DZvezdan and DZvonko are both Slavonic names (2/2).

I Ivan Ignat Ignatij Igor Ilarion
Ilija Inokentij Iraklij Irinej Isaija
Isidor Ice
HB: Ivan, Ilija and Isaija are Hebrew names (3/12).
LN: Ignat, Ignatij and Inokentij are Latin, extensively used in Byzantium (4/12).
Ice is indeterminate.
SL: Igor is Slavonic (1/12).
GK: Ilarion/Ilarion, Iraklij/Heracles, Irinej/Eirinaios and Isidor/Isidoros are Greek (4/12).

J Jakim Jakov Janaki Jane Joanikij
Joakim Jovan Jonko Jordan Josif
HB: Jakim, Jakov, Janaki, Jane, Joanikij, Joakim, Jovan, Jonko, Jordan, Josif are all Hebrew/Biblical names (10/10).
HB/GK: Janaki, though Hebrew/John has a very modern Greek loan form Giannakis/Little John, and Joanikij, though originaly Hebrew appears here in its hellenized version as Ioannikios.

K Kalistrat Kiprijan Kiril Kitan Kliment
Kozma Konstantin Kostadin Krale Krste
Kuzman
LN: Konstantin/Constantinus, Kostadin/Constantinus and Krale/Carolus are Latin (3/11)
SL: Kitan, Kuzman (2/11)
LT/SL: Krale, though Originaly Latin is also used in Slavonic languages as a name denoting King due to the legacy of Charlemagne (1/11).
GK: Kalistrat/Kallistratos, Kiprijan/Cyprianos, Kiril/Cyrillos, Kitan, Kliment/Klimis, Kozma/Kosmas, Krste/Christos are Greek (6/11).

L Lavrentij Lazar Lambe Leonid Leontie
Lefter Luka
HB: Lazar/Lazaros is Hebrew (1/7).
LN: Luka/Lucas and Lavrentij/Laurentius are Latin (2/7)
GK: Lefter/Eleutherios, Lambe/Lampes (from Charalampes), Leonid/Leonidas, Leontie/Leontios are Greek (4/7).

LJ LJube LJuben LJubomir LJupcho LJudmil
SL: LJube, LJuben, LJubomir, LJupcho, LJudmil are Slavonic (5/5).

M Makaraie Makedon Maksim Manoil Manol
Manojlo Marin Marko Matea Matej
Metodij Miladin Mile Mirko Miron
Miroslav Misail Mitan Mitre Mihail
Mladen Mojsej Mojsie
HB: Manoil/Emanuel, Manol/Emanuel, Mihail/Michael, Matea/Matthew, Matej/Matthew, Manojlo/Emanuel, Mojsej/Moses, Mojsie/Moses and Misail/Michael are Hebrew/Biblical names (9/23).
LT: Maksim(us), Marin(us), Marko/Marcus are Latin (3/23).
SL: Miladin, Mile, Mirko, Miroslav, Mitan and Mladen are Slavonic (6/23)
GK: Makaraie/Makarios, Makedon, Metodij/Methodios, Miron and Mitre/Mitros a diminutive of Demetrios are Greek (5/23)

N Najden Nase Naste Natanail Naum
Nace Nakje Neven Nedelko Nektarij
Noefit Nestor Nikanor Nikita Nikifor
Nikodim Nikola Novak Nove
HB: Natanail and Naum are Hebrew names (2/19).
SL: Najden, Nakje, Neven, Nedelko, Novak and Nove are Slavonic (6/19).
GK: Nace/Anastasios, Naste/Anastasios, Nektarij/Nektarios, Noefit/Neophytos, Nestor, Nikanor, Nikita(s) and Nikifor/Nikiphoros, Nikodim/Nikodemos and Nikola(os) are Greek (10/19).

O Ognen Ordan Orce
SL: Ognen, Ordan, Orce are Slavonic (3/3).

P Pavle Pandil Pane Pantelejmon Panche
Partenij Paskal Pahomij Pejko Petar
Petko Pimen Plamencho Polikarp Prodan
Projko Prokopij Prohor
LN: Pavle is Latin (1/18).
SL: Panche, Pejko, Petko, Plamencho, Prodan, Projko, Panche (7/18).
GK: Pane/Panagiotis, Pandil/Pantelis, Partenij/Parthenios, Paskal/Paschalis, Pahomij/Pachomios, Petar/Petros, Pimen, Polikarp(os), Prokopij/Prokopios, Prohor(ios) (10/18).

R Radovan Radomir Radoslav Razmo Rajko
Rangel Ranko Rastko Ratko Ratomir
Rafael Ristan Riste Rodoljub Romil
Ruse Rusomir
HB: Rafael/Raphael is Biblical (1/17)
LT: Romil/Romylus is Latin (1/17)
SL: Radovan, Radomir, Radoslav, Razmo, Rajko, Rangel, Ranko, Rastko, Ratko, Ratomir, Ristan, Riste, Rodoljub, Ruse, Rusomir are all Slavonic (15/17).
SL/GK: Riste is a derivative of the Greek Christos.

S Save Sazdan Samoil Sande Sarafil
Sare Sasho Svetislav Svetozar Svetolik
Svetomir Serafim Siljan Simon Slave
Slavoljub Slobodan Smile Solunche Sofronija
Spasen Spiridon Srebre Sreten Stamen
Stefan Stojan
HB Save/Sava, Samoil/Samuel, Serafim/Seraphim are Hebrew (3/27)
SL Sazdan, Sande, Sarafil, Sare, Sasho, Svetislav, Svetozar, Svetolik, Svetomir, Siljan, Slave, Slavoljub, Slobodan, Smile, Solunche, Spasen, Srebre, Sreten, Stamen, Stojan are Slavonic. (21/27)
SL/HB Stojan is a derivative of John, a Biblical name.
SL/GK Solunche is derived from the Greek name Thessalonike and Sasho is a Slavic diminutive of the greek name Alexandros.
GK Simon, Sofronija/Sopfronios, Spiridon, Stefan(os) are Greek (4/27)

T Tanas Tase Tashko Temelko Teodor
Teodosij Teofan Teofil Teofilakt Timotej
Tihomir Trajan Todor Trifun Trpe
LN: Trajan/Traianus is Latin (1/15)
SL: Tashko Temelko, Tihomir, Trpe are Slavonic (4/15)
GK: Tanas/Athanasios, Tase/Anastasios,Teodor/Theodoros, Teodosij/Theodosios, Teofan/Theophanes, Teofil/Theophilos, Teofilakt/Theophylactos, Timotej/Timotheos, Todor/Theodoros and Trifun/Triphon are Greek (10/15)

KJ KJire KJirko
SL: KJire and KJirko are Slavonic (2/2)

F Fidan Filimon Filip Firfo Flore
Fotij
LN: Flore is Latin (1/6).
SL: Fidan and Firfo are Slavonic (2/6).
GK: Filimon, Filip/Philippos and Fotij/Photios are Greek (3/6).

H Hranislav Hristijan Hristo Hristifor
SL: Hranislav is Slavonic (1/4)
GK: Hristijan/Christianos, Hristo/Christos and Hristifor/Christophoros are Greek names(3/4)

C Cane Cvetan
SL: Cane and Cvetan are Slavonic (2/2).

CH CHaslav CHedo CHedomir
SL: CHaslav, CHedo and CHedomir are all Slavonic (3/3).

SH SHane SHishko
SL: SHane and SHishko are both Slavonic (2/2).

There are a total of 292 names in this list, all common to male Slavomacedonians. Out of these names 42 are Biblical/Hebrew in origin, 18 are Latin in origin, 128 are Slavonic in origin and 103 are Hellenic/Greek in origin.
If we look at the numbers of each category we arrive at these percentages:
Hebrew/Biblical names: 42 names or 14.38%
Latin names: 18 names or 6.16%
Slavonic names: 128 names or 43.83%
Hellenic/Greek names: 103 names or 35.27%

Instead of trying to "prove" an unprovable and wholly fictitious Balkan and Macedonian autochthony, using the ancient Greek names of the ancient Macedonians as a fake spearhead (foolishly attempting to explain them as Slavonic in nature), the Skopian propagandists should at some point make an effort to gain some crumbs of their long ago lost seriousness by sitting down and trying to explain the flood of Hellenic names in their own onomastics: more than one in three names, fully 35.27% of Slavomacedonian names are Hellenic in origin.
Instead of trying of claiming (un-historically) that the two Byzantine monks from Thessalonike, in the imperial diplomatic service, the nobles Constantinos-Cyrillos and his brother Methodios were Slavs, they should try to be as grateful to the Greek nation (as all the other Slavs are, starting with the Russians), for the gift of Christianity and Graeco-Roman (Byzantine) civilization that their progenitors received from the Greeks. A whopping 35.27 of the Slavomacedonian male names, proves the point as to who influenced whom, after all.
As far as onomastics go, Greek names account for over 95% of the ancient Macedonian names, over 95% of modern Macedonian Greek names (the rest being Biblical and Latin) and over 35% of modern Slavomacedonian male names. Slavonic names account for almost 44% of all modern Slavomacedonian male names while there is not a single one, I repeat, NOT A SINGLE ONE Slavonic name in the modern Greek (Macedonian or other) onomastics whether ancient (that would be a historical joke) or in the modern Greek one.
Here we treated only the male Slavomacedonian names. We will revisit this issue again with the female names common among the Slavomacedonians of FYROM-Skopje. As for the last names, the fact that such well known Slavomacedonian names as Gruevski, Chervenkovski and Milososki rhyme perfectly well with Jaruzelski, Brzezinski, Lempitski, Moskovski, Malinovski and Sibirski tells us volumes about the closest linguistic relatives of the Slavomacedonians. I have not seen many Poles, Czecks, Slovaks or Russians claim descent from the Greek-speaking ancient Macedonians, after all: they are serious about their self esteem and very much comfortable and proud about their Slavic self-identity not to play havoc with it. If only their Yugoslavian (= south Slavic) cousins from Skopje would do the same, instead of acting like adopted Balkan orphans tragically searching for their long lost roots, the Macedonian name issue would not be here.
Pseudo-Macedonism, as we have proven time and again, is based on a Big Lie, a fake identity imposed on an esentially Slavonic nation; Slavonic in language and culture, though not necessarily in DNA or ethnic descent, which is mixed and it matters very little in identity anyway. Pseudo-Macedonism is a transformational travesty in the most literal sense of the world and this is not an insult, it is a political description.

The Archaic Greek Temple of Aphrodite in Thessalonike, Macedonia, Greece

O Αρχαϊκός Ελληνικός Ναός της Αφροδίτης στην Θεσσαλονίκη
(http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/155730)





The Archaic temple of Aphrodite is dated to the end of the 6th cBC and it was originally discovered during excavations in 1936, only to be lost years later in the destruction of Nazi occupation of the city and the subsequent post war development. It is at the beginning of Dioiketeriou street. It was situated at the Hiera/Ἴερά district, the sacred temples district of ancient Thessalonike. It was originally built in the city of Thermae, the predescessor of Thessaloniki, and it was moved into the present location during Roman times, a huge engineering undertaking for that time in its own merit.
Besides its archaeological and cultural significance, through its mere existence this temple flies at the face of the pseudo-macedonists of Skopje and their apologists, who try to falsify history reinventing it:

"8) GREEK CLAIM: "Macedonians worshiped the same Gods as the rest of the Greeks Several temples dedicated to the Greek Gods have been discovered in Macedonia and especially in Dion the religious center of ancient Macedonians. It is obvious that the Macedonians worshiped the 12 Olympian Gods as the rest of the Greeks..."

(Skopian) REPLY:
"...the Macedonians did not worshiped the Greek gods, but also there is not a single temple discovered on the territory of Macedonia which resembles the temples in Greece...
...The fact that the Macedonians had their own gods, does prove that they had different religion from the Greeks who worshiped different gods...
...Macedonians had their own Gods and religion, separate from the Greeks...
...Macedonians had their own gods and religion distinct from the Greeks..."

One of the arguments the Skopian pseudomacedonists propagate is that Ancient Macedonia does not have any Greek temples, and that the ancient Mmacedonians did not believe in the same Gods as the ancient Greeks. Some Skopjean charlatans, like the infamous pseudo-scientists Tendov and Boshevski, professors at the Универзитет „Св. Кирил и Методиј“ - Скопје / Univerzitet „Sv. Kiril i Metodij“ - Skopje (professor Boshevski is also a member of the SLAVO-Macedonian Academy of Arts and PSEUDO-Sciences in Skopje) go even so far as to CREATE imaginary deities, with invented names such as God Sa, God Ve, God Vo, God Vi, God De, God Ho, God Xo, God Li, God Itchka, God Ka and God Zmija! (The ROSETTA STONE and the Tendov-Boshevski controversy-Illusions of ancient grandeur through Balkan pseudoscience. http://macedonianissues.blogspot.com/2010/01/blog-post.html).
Greeks have the expression "Ta marmara den pseudontai": "Marbles do not lie", meaning that while every charlatan can invent any pseudo-makedonski theory they want, the proof is always to be found in the documents of the ancient epigraphy, by facts invested by history in the ground.

The temple of Aphrodite in the center of Thessalonike speaks clearer about the Hellenic nature of this ancient Macedonian city which bears the name of Casander's wife, Alexander the Great's half sister Θεσσαλονίκη/Thessaloniki, and it speaks more sensibly than any Skopjean boisterous cries and screams about a supposed "proto-Slavic" Makedonskata Солун/Solun.

The site of the temple is on private land. The owners want the temple ruins to be covered and a permit to be allowed for building a residential condominium building over it. Besides being an outrageously sacrilegious insult against Greek culture and archaeology, the uniqueness of the temple, being the oldest building in Thessalonike and one of the earliest and most complete examples of Greek religious architecture in Macedonia. This is not a trivial issue and certainly not an exclusively local issue either. All defenders of Hellenic culture need to intervene and support the purchase of the privately owned city lot by the Greek Archaeological Society. The archaeological site of the temple of Aphrodite needs to be restored and developed for visitors and scholars alike and for the visual enjoyment of the local Thessalonians too.
The architectural members of the temple have been recovered during the first excavation in the 1930's and they are currently housed or being on display at the Archaeological Museum of Thessalonike.



Few cities around the world wide have been blessed with such multi-leveled archaeological wealth. Thessalonike is the envy of others, in this respect. Poor Skopjeans, on the other hand, have zero proof for their baseless and unhistorical claims over ancient Macedonia.
All they can do is use names of ancient Greek kings, paraphrasing them to confront to their Slavonic language, Филип/Filip for Φίλιππος/Philippos and Александар/Aleksandar for Αλέξανδρος/Alexandros, in order to re-name Yugoslav streets, stadia, airports and highways into Slavo-"Makedonci" ones. To their dismay, the land their forefathers settled back in the middle ages, during the descent of the south Slavs into the Byzantine Balkan peninsula, is not cooperating: all the statues that the Skopjeans discover when they dig into their earth have (alas!) Greek inscriptions on them. To dupe their own population into believing and accepting the fantastical ultra-nationalist myths of fake Makedonism, FYROM's Government went to Italy and ordered modern statues to raise them in the middle of the Dardnanian city of Scupi, modern Skopje. Of course they also paid the Italians to scribe Cyrillic letters on these modern statues, since the ancient ones were not cooperating with Skopje's proto-Slavonic Makedonija myths.

Greece, like China, is a country of four thousand years of un-disrupted habitation of the same historic people, with continuity in culture and history, and millennia of survival and development of its language. The legacy of the ancient Macedonians is not attested only in the Greek language of the modern inhabitants of Makedonia, in Northern Greece. It is also attested in the vast cultural relics spread throughout Μακεδονία/Macedonia: Homeric Macedonian "toumbes"-tombs, ancient Greek theaters, Hellenic epigraphy and, of course, archaic temples to ancient Greek Gods and Goddesses, like the aforementioned Naos-temple of Aphrodite in downtown Thessalonike.

The Greek Archaeological society needs to buy out the city lot on which the foundation and base of the temple has been discovered from the private owners and to do what they do best: restore the temple Aphrodite in downtown Thessalonike in a meticulous, scientific way, stone by stone, following the Venice convention Archaeological standards, like they do in Archaeological sites throughout Greece.

P.S. The three photographs of the existing site were taken by the author.

Macedonian names and makeDonski pseudo-linguistics: The case of the name Sitas

Balkan Illusion - phantasia archaica:

"...it is very interesting to note that many of the authentic ancient Macedonian words, according to their etymology and pronunciation, have a striking resemblance to the appropriate words used in the modern Macedonian language (and other so called "Slav"[sic] languages). " Sita. A name that is identical to the present day Macedonian adjective "sita" (eating to satisfaction). The male name Sitko is present in todays' Macedonian onomasticon." Quote taken from: "Similarities between ancient Macedonian and today's' Macedonian Culture (Linguistics and Onomastics)" by Aleksandar Donski, celebrity historian from FYROM.

Sitas/Σίτας - Sita/Σίτα

In the archaeological museum of Gloucester in England someone can stare at a curious funerary stele. It is a rough but beautiful carving of a Roman horseman in relief. His head is protected by a Roman helmet and he is holding an oval shield on his left hand. He is holding a spear on his right hand, attacking a local barbarian who has already fallen to the ground and is desperately making a last ditch effort to defend himself with his sword.

The Latin inscription at the bottom of the stele reads as follows:

RVFVS SITA EQVES CHO VI
TRACVM ANN XL STIP XXII
HEREDES EXS TEST F CVRAVE
H S E

Rufus Sita, Horseman of the Sixth Cohort
of Thracians; 40 years (old); paid (for) 22 (years);
His heirs, according to his will, had this made.
Here is the site (of his grave)

The stele gives us a wealth of information about the deceased soldier. His name was Rufus Sita. Rufus, his first name being Latin, was already a Roman citizen. His original name was Sita, but after joining the army and adopting the Latin name Rusus as his first name, the Thracian name Sita became his second, family name. He was a horseman of the VI / sixth Cohort of Thracians: Cohors Sextae Thracum equitata – The Sixth Cohort of Thracians – part mounted . He served 22 of his 40 years in the Roman army. He died in Britannia, far from his native Thrace, serving the Imperial Roman army as a cavalry man.

His heirs, dutiful to the Thracian religious legacy of the “Thracian horseman” (a recurrent theme of almost all Thracian funerary stelae) had Sita's image carved showing him as a knight. This image fused Sita’s imperial army military function as a Roman cavalry man with his native Thracian religious legacy as a Thracian horseman, fighting evil for the good of mankind. The only substitution is the desperately fighting British barbarian trampled underneath his horse, instead of the agriculturally destructive Boar that would have been the more proper Thracian imagery. Sitas the Roman is shown defeating the barbarian as Sitas the Thracian would be defeating the wild boar. He is defending the Pax Romana instead of the tree of life. In Thracian religious imagery the tree of life, with its chthonian snake hanging from the branches, is the symbol of the agricultural land and its produce and the wealth derived from it. The chthonian snake is the tree of life’s protector dragon.

The mythology of Sita’s beloved Thrace is thus merged and integrated with this soldier’s legacy as a Roman frontier defender. The docile chthonian snake entangled in the branches of the Thracian agricultural tree of life is fused with the people of the Roman Empire whose duty it is for Sitas to defend. The land of his native Thrace, after all, was an integral part of this same Roman Empire. The British barbarian who is viewed as the destructive force that endangers with his raids the well-being of the dutiful Roman citizenry and the wild boar whose raids on the fields of his native Thrace brought destruction to the fields and the agricultural wealth of the Thracian farmer were thus being defeated by Sitas. Sitas was in this imagery commissioned by his heirs openly identified with the Thracian Hero-Pyrmeroulas. Pyrmaroulas’s name is derived from pyros/πυρός, a Greek-Thracian isogloss meaning the wheat and barley seed.

Sitas was there to defend both. This was his realm. This was what he lived, fought and died for. He was a true Thracian horseman, a Hero/ Ήρως both in real life and in post-mortem legend.

The name Sitas is fairly common in Thracian onomastics. Aleksandar Donski claims that this is somehow a Slavomacedonian, a “Makedonski” name, but Sitas has no relation to the Modern Slavic inhabitants of FYROM, nor was it a name common to the Greek speaking Macedonians. It is definitely a Thracian name. In John Wilkes' book on The Illyrians, we read that: “The Illyrian component is markedly stronger in Dardania, including Das(s)ius, Scerviaedus and Andia, but Thracian names are also found, Sita and Nanea...”
Ancient Dardania is the same land that the Byzantine Greeks later called Kossyfopedion/Κοσσυφοπέδιον which the Slavs shortened to Kosovo and Metohia / Косово и Метохија, Μετόχια indicating lands belonging to Greek Orthodox monasteries. The Dardanian city of Scupi is modern Skopje, a city that, while Dardanian and Kossyphopedian by history and geography now strives to be recognized as “capital of a (misplaced and misnamed) Macedonia, a Slavonic Makedonija”.

John Wilkes informs us that Sitas is a Thracian name that appears in the epigraphic record of Illyria and more specifically of Dardania. The proximity of Dardania to Macedonia and the phonetics of the name are enough to confuse someone into thinking that this Greek-sounding name could possible be an ancient Macedonian name, but it is not.
Dio Cassius (Δίων ὁ Κάσσιος) a Greek historian (born 155AD at Nicaea of Bithynia in Asia Minor, died about 240AD) wrote an extensive history of the Roman nation. In the 51st book of his history, where Dio Cassius is speaking of the army of Marcus Crassus we read about a blind Thracian king named Sitas/Σιτας, king of the Thracian tribe of the Dentheletae:

“ἐπεὶ δὲ τόν τε Αἷμον ὑπερέβησαν καὶ τὴν Θρᾴκην τὴν Δενθελητῶν ἔνσπονδον αὐτοῖς οὖσαν κατέδραμον,
ἐνταῦθα ὁ Κράσσος τὸ μέν τι τῷ Σιτᾷ τῷ τῶν Δενθελητῶν βασιλεῖ τυφλῷ ὄντι ἀμύνων, τὸ δὲ δὴ πλεῖστον περὶ τῇ
Μακεδονίᾳ φοβηθεὶς ἀντεπῆλθέ σφισι, καὶ αὐτοὺς ἐκ τῆς προσόδου μόνης καταπλήξας ἐξέωσεν ἀμαχεὶ ἐκ τῆς χώρας.”

“and once they crossed over Haemus and overran the part of Thrace which belonged to the Dentheletae, and was in treaty with the Romans, here Crassus, in part to defend Sitas, the king of the Dentheleti, who was blind, but mostly out of fear for (an attack against) Macedonia, went out to meet them and throwing them into a panic just by his approach, he pushed them out of the country without even a battle.”
Δίων ο Κάσσιος Ρωμαικη Ιστορια, Βιβλιον 51-23-4 / Cassius Dio, Roman History, Book 51-23-4

Another Thracian name, similar sounding to Sitas but obviously related to it is Sitalkes. We know of several Thracians by this name, the most famous being Sitalkes son of Teres and father of Seuthes, all of them being great kings of the Odryssian Thracians. Sitalkes reigned between 431 - 424 BC. He is mentioned by the historian Thucycides. Sitalces was the son of Teres and King of the Thracians. Teres, the father of Sitalces, was the first to establish the great kingdom of the Odrysians on a scale quite unknown to the rest of Thrace, a large portion of the Thracians being independent.
Thucydides 2.29 - Athenian alliance with Sitalces (431 BC).

The Athenian comedy writer Aristophanes, in his comedy the Acharnians/Aχαρνεις mentions a Sitakes too:

(Κῆρυξ) προσίτω Θέωρος ὁ παρὰ Σιτάλκους.
(Herald)
Bring in Theoros, who has returned from the Court of Sitalces.
(Θέωρος) ὁδί.
(Theoros) (rising; he wears a Thracian costume.)
I am here.
(Δικαιόπολις) ἕτερος ἀλαζὼν οὗτος ἐσκηρύττεται.
(Dikaiopolis) Another humbug!
(Θέωρος) χρόνον μὲν οὐκ ἂν ἦμεν ἐν Θρᾴκῃ πολύν --
(Theoros) We should not have remained long in Thrace...
Αριστοφάνους Αχαρνείς / Aristophanes, Acharnians, 425 BC

Lastly, there is a Sitalkes (Σιτάλκης) taking part in Alexander's Asian expedition as (very tellingly) the leader of the Thracian light armed troops, Alexander's Thrakes akontistai/Θράκες ακοντισταί, the javelin men. He was a prince and most probably the son of the Thracian King Kersobleptes. This Sitalkes had been given a Government post in Macedonian occupied Media under Parmenion whom he assassinated under orders of Alexander. He was likewise also later himself executed on orders of Alexander, for brutal misgovernment, upon Alexander's return from India.

Since we are already close to India, let us leave the Thracian Kings Sitas and Sitalkes and the Τhracian prince Sitalkes who was in the service Alexander, and their native Thrace for a while and let us travel to the Orient even further to the far East, to lands Alexander the Great and his Macedonians never visited.
We hear that in distant Thailand, there is a Buddhist Goddess whose name in the Thai language is Nang Sida and in the Lao language is Nang Sanda. The same Goddess in nearby Malaysia is called Siti Dewi (Dewi means Goddess. The Latin word Deus-God, the Greek Dios/Διός, genitive form of Zeus and the Greek word Theos/Θεός-God as well as the words Divine and Deity in English are all derived from the same Indo-European root). Thai and Lao and Malay are not Indo-European languages of course. But nearby Northern India, where Buddhism started from speaks in Indo-European tongues, is. The ancient language of India was Sanskrit, one of the main pillars, along with Greek, Latin and Germanic, of modern Indo-European linguistic research.
Since Buddhism had its beginning in Hinduism, so we go searching for the Goddess Sita in India, and indeed we soon find her: Sita / सीता is the incarnation (avatara) of the Goddess Lakshmi who in turn is the Goddess of wealth, prosperity and generosity. We need to remember this point. Sita is also the wife of Rama, the legendary king of Ayodhya, an ancient Indian city still in existence, whose wealth and prosperity on the northern plains of ancient India was fabled and lusciously described in Ramayana, one of the main Hindu epics. Rama was in fact considered the seventh incarnation (avatar) of the supreme God Vishnu. Laxshmi decided to descend to earth as Sita, and to toil and endure the hard life so as to become an example to mankind by showing men and especially women that through hard work and virtue wealth and prosperity can be reached. This is why Sita is considered the purest prototype of the proper Hindu woman.

Sita as legend has it was found as a baby in the fields in a furrow in a ploughed field, so everyone assumed her to be the natural daughter of Bhudevi, the Mother Earth Goddess. In fact the original meaning the Goddess Sita's name in Sanskrit is “furrow”: the channel in the field produced by the slow pulling of the plough. It now becomes apparent that Sita is definitely an agricultural deity a deity of wealth that comes from ploughing the fields and the manual toil of agricultural activities. Sita / सीता is “someone of the furrow”, the deity “of a cultivated field”.
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The word “situs” in Latin indicates something or a land in neglect, land that is in need of cultivation. The word Σίτος / Sitos in both modern and ancient Greek means wheat, corn and grain in general. In modern Greek it is also called Στάρι / Stari or Σιτάρι / Sitari. Σιταγωγέω / Sitagogeo in ancient Greek meant the transporting of the grain from the fields And Σιταγωγός / Sitagogos was the specially modified grain transport ship. The word Σιτεύω / Siteuo in both modern and ancient Greek means to fatten the animals by supplying them with plenty of barley seeds and Σιτοβολώνας / Sitobolonas is the field that produces plenty of wheat. Thessaly, in Greek is called the Σιτοβολώνας / Sitobolonas of Greece, for its importance in wheat production that feeds the country. In Dorian Greek (the “northwest” variance of which was spoken in Epirus, Aetolia and Macedonia) Σιτάθην / Sitathen was equal to the Attic and Ionian Εσιτήθην / Esitethen which is the past tense of Σιτέω / Siteo which means to feed someone (original : with grain and wheat). The modern Slavo-macedonian word sita which means to eat to fulfillment, having no Slavic equivalent leads us to believe that (like thousands of other Greek words in this Slavic dialect that borders Greek speaking areas) is most certainly a loan word from the Greek noun Sitari / Grain-Weat and its derivative verb Sitepsa /Σίτεψα, meaning I am already full of food or I became fat with too much food.

A Greek name that is etymologically and semiologically distantly related to Sitas is found on an inscription from the island of Euboea, where among numerous other Greek names we also encounter the name Sitarchos/ Σίταρχος:

Regions : Aegean Islands, incl. Crete (IG XI-[XIII]) : Euboia (IG XII,9) , IG XII,9 245, Euboia — Eretria — early 3rd c. BC — cf. Addenda Ultima p.VII — cf. IG XII,supp.183,24
Σώστρατος Θέωνος Ζαρ(ηκόθεν)
Αἴσωπος Νήσωνος ἐγ Ν(—)
Εὐαγόρας Λυσιστράτου ἐγ Ν(—)
Φιλώνιχος Φιλήμονος Ζαρ(ηκόθεν)
Χαίριππος Χαιριδήμου Ζαρ(ηκόθεν)
Δ̣ίμων Βύβακος Στυρ(όθεν)
Σκύθης Παραμόνου ἐγ Νε(—)
Κλεόδημος Δαφνίωνος Στυ(ρόθεν)
Σίταρχος Θέωνος Ζαρ(ηκόθεν)
Sitarchos son of Theon, from the town of Zarekos

Sitarchos was originally a trade name describing the official who was entrusted with the duty of procuring the grain necessary to feed (προς σίτησιν/ pros sitesin) the city. His office was called Sitarchia/Σιταρχία as this inscription from Cyprus indicates:

SEG 20:244 SEG 20:243 SEG 20:245
Fragmentary petition addressed to Ptolemy VI or Ptolemy VIII by troops
stationed at Paphos. Fragment of a stele of fine white marble.
Kypros — Nea Paphos (Kato Pafos) — ca. 154 BC? — AJA 65 (1961) 100, 4
[— — ἀπολ]ε̣λ̣ε̣ι̣μ̣μ̣ένοι(?) Λ̣[ύκιοι(?) — — — — — —] the devastated Lycians
[— φιλαν]θρωπηθῆναι ἀπ̣[ὸ — — — — — — — — —] philanthropically assisted by
[— βασι]λικῆς δόσεως [— — — — — — — — — — —] royal donation
[— — — —]ω̣ν τὰς Σιταρχί[ας — — — — — — — — —] the Sitarchies

An equivalent officer in South Italian Greek of Magna Graecia / Μεγάλη Ελλάς would be called Sitagertes / Σιταγέρτης, as is attested in the following inscription:
IG XIV 645 Italy, incl. Magna Graecia:
...ἄλλαι συνθήκαι γεγράπται. ℎότι δέ κα μὴ πράξει ℎο ἀνℎελόμενος κὰτ τὰν συνθήκαν ἢ μὴ ἐν τοῖς χρόνοις τοῖς γεγραμμένοις, ℎυπόλογος ἐσσήται τοῖς πολιανόμοις καὶ τοῖς σιταγέρταις τοῖς ἐπὶ τῶ <ϝ>έτεος, καθὼς καὶ ἐν τᾶι ἄλλαι συνθήκαι γεγράπται...

...as written other treaties. Whatever responsibility the undertaker takes upon himself to complete according to the contract if he does not complete within the agreed time frames, he will be held accountable to the polianomoi (πολιανόμοις - the city law-officials) and to the sitagertai (σιταγέρταις - the city grain-officials) of that year as it is written in the related contracts...

In Macedonia, and more particularly in Paionia, we find the name Sita, on a double funerary inscription:

Regions : Northern Greece (IG X) : Macedonia , Spomenik 71 (1931) 74,174 , Spomenik 71 (1931) 75,175
Makedonia (Paionia) — Resava: Čakovec — date? — Dimitsas, He Makedonia 287 — cf. TIR K34,109 (prov.)
Γαΐᾳ Τίτου Βυρδί-
ων Σίτα τῇ συμ-
βίῳ καὶ ἑαυτῷ ζῶν.
Τίτῳ Βάκχα Νεικη-
σὼ τῷ ἀνδρὶ καὶ αὑτῇ
ζώσῃ.
To Gaia, daughter of Titos Byr-
dion son of Sitas to his life-
companion and to himself while still living.
To Titos son of Bacchas, Neike-
So to her husband and to herself
while still living.

The names are mixed. Gaia and Titos/Titus are clearly Latin names, which indicates that this inscription is dated to the Roman era. Byrdion / Βυρδίων, as K.G. Kourtides in his “Istoria tes Thrakes”/History of Thrace (Κ.Γ.Κουρτίδου, Ιστορία της Θράκης, 1932) tells us is a typical Thracian name, along with Βύζος/Byzos, Βίτων/Biton, Βίττος/Bittos, Δέβειθυς/Debeithys, Δίτύβιατος/Ditybiatos, Πιατοϋς/Piatoys, Βίθυος/Bythios, Βείθίβτράλης/Beithybtrales, etc).
Bacchas / Βάκχας and Nikeso / Νεικησὼ are Greek names. This leaves us Sitas, which, as we saw in the beginning of this article is also a Thracian name. therefore, while this inscription is found in Macedonia, it is obvious that we are encountering Hellenized and Romanized Thracians, quite possibly intermarried with Greek speaking Macedonians and Hellenized Paionians.
This is the only inscription that we have been able to locate that the name Sitas is documented in Macedonia.

Moving away from Macedonia now, we move to western China, where we encounter the curiously Greek-sounding Tocharian-B language. Tocharian was spoken by an extinct and yet to be indentified indo-European-speaking people that inhabited what is now Xinjiang, a land now inhabited mostly by Turkic speaking Uigurs and Han Chinese. In the literary documents of the Tocharians we find the word “sito” which meant “grain field”.

Looking deep into our common indo-European legacy, we find the common Indo-European root word *seh1i- whose original meaning was: “to sow”. This word seems to be the original root of all the Sitos-related cognates found in Greek, Latin, Tocharian, Sanskrit and Thracian. But this, as we will find out, is only the beginning.
The word sitos/σίτος means “wheat” in Greek. It is a very ancient word since it already appears documented as “si-to” in Linear B clay tablets of Mycenaean / Achaean Greek from the mid-second millennium BC. Sitos happens to be one of those rare words that are lost in the mist of the distant linguistic pre-history of the Eastern Mediterranean. The only other word which I can think of that is so widespread across diverse linguistic families, from Africa to Europe and the Middle East, is the word for “cat”, which also transcends linguistic family barriers, possibly due to its Egyptian origin.

The Greek “sitos” for wheat appears as an isogloss “zitu” in Basque (the only local
non Indo-European language of the European continent) and it means “cereal”. It also appears as “zid” in ancient Sumerian, a very ancient Semitic language of Mesopotamia, where it means “wheat flower”. The word for “wheat” or “corn” in ancient Egyptian is “sw’t”. In most Slavonic languages zito/ Житo means cereal (Russian, Bulgarian, Serbocroatian, Slovenian and Slavomakedonski among other languages and dialects. Сито/Sito means “sieve” in Russian and Serbian, and it is used mostly to describe the flower strainer used for cleaning up the flower from the grains, so it is related to sitos and to zito. In Greek an almost identical isogloss exists: sita/σήτα, meaning the strainer net, obviously related etymologically to the wheat grain. The white (wheat ) bread is called Sitnyj chleb / ситный хлеб in Russian, an obvious isogloss of sitos/σίτος and zito/Житo.

Aleksandar Donski is trying to convince us that “according to etymology and pronunciation” Sitas is a “name that is identical to the present day Macedonian adjective "sita" (eating to satisfaction).” But if we look into Russian, we find out that an almost identical and for sure related word exists in Russian too: Ситост/Sitost, eating to fulfillment. Сытный / Sitnij means ritchly nourishing in Russian. Are the Russian Makedonci too?

If you ask some delusional pseudo-macedonians in Skopje, professor Boshevski of the so called Macedonian Academy of the Arts and Sciences of Skopje, among others, they will answer in the affirmative: all the Slavs, the pseudomacedonians claim, are indeed Makedonci. If we are to retain some semblance of seriousness though, we will have to admit that sita and sitost and sitnij are Slavic isoglosses. Therefore, if we also remember the Greek verb siteuo, then the picture becomes very cleare: Since wheat became domesticated and was first cultivated somewhere around the middle east, deep in our human prehistory, almost ten thousand years ago, and since the early Indo-Europeans learned the trade of cultivation from the early inhabitants of Mesopotamia and Anatolia it becomes explainable why the word for wheat is so common to so many linguistically diverse people such as Egyptians, Greeks, Tocharians, Slavs, Basques and Sumerians, among others, all being related through the use of this rich and nutritious cereal.
Let us then return to the ancient Thracians. The word “Siros” meant the place where someone stores the grain, in the Thracian language, the granary.
( http://indoeuro.bizland.com/project/glossary/thra.html ).

The name of my hometown Serres / Σέρρες, an ancient city dominating the agriculturally fertile basin of Strymon / Στρυμών river in Central-Eastern Macedonia of northern Greece, whose preΗellenic name is Sirris / Σίρρις, according to Herodotus, is probably related to the Thracian word Siros, the granery. The name of a village in the nearby province of Drama, Sitagroi/Σιταγροί, the “Wheat fields”, shows that such a name would not be unusual. Sitagroi is a very ancient village after all, about 7000 years old: Prehistoric Sitagroi: Excavations in Northeast Greece, Ernestine S. Elster, Colin Renfrew, 1968-1970, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2004.06.21. Volume 2: The Final Report. Monumenta Archaeologia, 20. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, 2003. ( http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2004/2004-06-21.html ).

Sitas, we can now say with a high degree of certainty, was a Thracian name, which (while distantly connected as a word to the common -for many Indo-European and not only languages - word for the wheat grain) was nevertheless unrelated as a name to Greek, not necessarily derived from it. No stone inscription or other literary documentation exists that can tie this name to the Hellenic-speaking ancient Macedonians. On the other hand Sitas is most definitely not a Slavic name either. It is too ancient a name to be even considered as a south Slavic name. The Slavs did not arrive into the lower Balkans until the 7th century AD, several hundred years after the first attestation of this name by Thucydides and long after the Thracians had lost their linguistic and ethnic identity. The name Sitas, therefore (as well as the related Sitalces/Sitalkes and Sitalkas/Sitalcas), is most definitely and clearly a Thracian (Tracum, as the Rufus Sitas inscription reminds us) name whose original meaning was derived from the word for wheat-grain and the wealth that is derived from its cultivation.

Circo Slavomakedonija in Australia

Balkan dancers of the traveling circus company CIRCO SLAVOMAKEDONIJA, performing martial ballet dances of the ferocious ancient Slavomakedonci Bugari.
The performance includes savage battles of Protoslavic Slavomakedonci slaughtering the hated Grci. You will see a re-enactment of the assassination of the Protoslavic Makedonsko Czar Filip II of Makedonija, as well as the most famous of the Makedonci (after Gruevski), Czar Aleksandar Veliki (the Great) being poisoned by some evil Athenian girl pretending to be a Makedonka. It is an originally fake cultural production by Australian "Northern Macedonians".
The cherry on the cake is a world's first performance of a counterfeit copy of "Makedonia Xakousti"/"Μακεδονία Ξακουστή" in pure and unadulterated Skopjan Bugarski!

Νῦν ἀπολύεις τὸν δοῦλόν σου, δέσποτα, κατὰ τὸ ῥῆμά σου ἐν εἰρήνῃ
Luke 2:29
For my eyes have seen it all...

NOTE, March 11, 2010: THE AUSTRALIAN PSEUDOMACEDONIAN WHO HAD UPLOADED THIS VIDEO IN YOUTUBE REALIZED HIS MISTAKE AND ERASED IT.
THAT IS OK...WE STILL THANK HIM: WE HAD GREAT LAUGHS WHILE IT WAS ON.
Seeing Skopjans sing:
"Makedonia xakousti tou Alexandrou i chrora,
pou ediwxes tous Boulgarous ta agria theria..."
And to sing it in Bugarski: PRICELESS!!!
Once again: Γίνατε ρόμπες, παλικάρια!
NOTE, March 13, 2010
My warmest Eucharisties to "CARNIVALBEST" of YouTube for saving and re-uploading this hilarious video! Here are, once again, the ferocious "antickite makedonci" aka Australo-Bugari dancers, their historically realistic performance saved for posterity (cursed YouTube technology!) offering inexorable amusement for Hellenic History buffs the world over:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3U_h1tWBFw

THE LATEST FROM NORTH DISNEYLAND - Can it be True?

"Language to be called makedonski, identity not to be discussed", we read in the 4th of March, 2010 FOCUS News Agency wire from Skopje.
"Macedonia to be called the Republic of North Macedonia, the language to be written in Latin – makedonski and the nation and identity not to be discussed; this, according to Greek diplomatic resources is the resolution of the name dispute, which is not closed due to the lack of political will and mistrust between Macedonia and Greece, Macedonian Nova Makedonija newspaper writes. According to the same diplomatic resources the resolution of the issue is clear for everyone and the dispute can be resolved even tomorrow, but there should be a political will for that. The authorities in Macedonia know they should resolve the name issue but are afraid because, according to them, they have a problem with the pubic opinion, noting that Greece has the same problem, too.
Greece wants the language to be written as makedonski not Macedonian as Greek language is called Ellinika and Finnish – suomi."

Our Questions are simple and they are directed to Greece's COCA-COLA diplomacy geniuses:

TIMING-A: In whose interest is to solve the issue RIGHT NOW? The Greeks have been waiting for the Skopjan government to budge for almost 20 years now, and they went the other way, trying to get their constitutional name recognized by everyone, renamed everything into Philip II and Alexander the Great, so what is the fuss now? Why are the Greeks, under a barrage of international pressure on the economics front willing to sit on the bargaining table NOW?

TIMING-B: The Albanians of the DUI party (the largest party in FYROM) and Ali Ahmeti, its leader, personally have already threatened to topple the Gruevski government unless he comes to an understanding with the Greeks on the name this year. Gruevski is sitting on a political time bomb and the Greeks seem to be giving him EVERYTHING he wants...NOW? What would be the problem with the toppling of the ultranationalist Gruevski government and the formation of a new government in Skopje that would be more sensible and compromising on the name issue?

IRREDENTISM: The names Macedonia and the more official Republic of Macedonia are intrinsically containing the seeds of irredentism against the Northern Greek provinces of Macedonia. The Skopjans do not hide this. Anyone that goes in the internet and visits FYROMian sites can read and hear this clearly and loudly. Does the name "Republic of Northern Macedonia" solve this issue? To anyone with more than half an ounce of brain, it is obvious that a name such as NORTHERN MACEDONIA NOT ONLY IT DOES NOT SOLVE BUT TO THE CONTRARY IT AGGRAVATES THE PROBLEM of Skopjan Irredentism! The "independent" Republic of "Northern Macedonia" will then be able to seek more forcefully its "reunification" with the "enslaved" part of a perceived "southern" Macedonia...isn't this CLEAR and OBVIOUS to everyone? IS IT IN THE LONG TERM INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE OF FYROM (Albanian, Greek, and Slavic) AND THE PEOPLE OF GREECE, to be led into such a half-baked idiotic solution that ALREADY CONTAINS THE SEEDS for THE NEXT ROUND OF DISPUTES?

MAKEDONSKI LANGUAGE: I Speak Hellenika but when someone asks me what language I speak I answer Greek, Greco, Griego, Si-la, Griek, Grec. If I answer Hellinika foreigners will be wondering what is Hellenika, and I will then have to repeat with a clarification in their language. As far as the dominant dialect spoken in FYROM, call it Makedonski, write it in Slavic letters, Greek, Arabic, Chinese, Korean or Latin Letters "Makedonski", but you cannot force anyone to learn Slavonic all of a sudden: everyone will call it in their own language in whatever way they want, they will translate it in English as "Macedonian" and the confusion between Modern Slavonic Makedonski and ancient Greek Macedonian will persist. After all, if it is accepted that FYROM should be called Macedonia, yes Northern but still Macedonia, what should be called the language of the people in Northen Macedonia? If you ask me about Suomi, I will have to think twice before I remember that on the stamps I was collecting as a child Finland was called Suomi, and Japan Nippon, and Hungary Magyar, and in those same Stamps Greece is always called Hellas, but for all practical purposes, geography maps do not follow these conventions. Is there any doubt on anyone's mind that the children of Lincoln, Nebraska will never learn that in "Northern Macedonia" the people speak "Macedonski" and they will be as confused as ever about the ancient Greek Macedonians with their Greek dialect and Skopjan "North Macedonians" with their Bulgarian-derived Slavic dialect?

NATION AND IDENTITY: The Bulgarians do not want the national identity of the people of FYROM to be touched. Bulgaria was the first state to recognize FYROM as Macedonia, BUT they never recognized them as Macedonians: For the Bulgarians, this is a fake nation of misdirected Yugoslav Bulgarians of Western Bulgaria that is geographically called Macedonia. Why are the Greeks shying away from this issue? It may be true that many of the Slavs of FYROM used to have a different communal identity 9if they had any) before 1913. Some considered themselves Partriarchal Greeks, others Exarchal Bulgarians, yet others called themselves Slav Macedonians, Slavomacedonians. In the same token, most Australians before the battle of Kallipoli in WWI used to consider themselves British, yet a new identity arose among them and the new nation of the Australians arose as a result. Today's Slavs of FYROM do not consider themselves to be Bulgarians, except for a small minority that opportunistically run to acquire a Bulgarian passport, a EUROPEAN COMMUNITY PASSPORT, that is. The thousands of Muslim Turks that fraudulently brought forward fake baptismal papers trying to prove that they are Greek Orthodox and with the help of the Bulgarian mafia which bribed corrupt Bulgarian state officials and received Bulgarian passports are no more Bulgarian than many of these desperate Slavomacedonians from FYROM who applied for one in order to become "Europeans". A bad name compounds the problems and solves nothing, while a good name solves EVERYTHING! If this is not a bitter joke played against the Macedonian Greeks, and a slap on their collective cultural identity, than what should we call it?

If we are to compromize then we might as well compromise in something that can make sense.
THE ONLY GOOD NAME TO SOLVE THIS ISSUE, without devastating either the Greeks or the Slavomacedonians of FYROM would be:
SLAVOMACEDONIA for the country
SLAVOMACEDONIANS for the Slavic speaking people of FYROM
SLAVOMACEDONIAN for the language

True, the majority of the land is not even part of historic Macedonia, most of it was either Paionia or Dardania in ancient times, and part of Kosovo during the ottoman times, but if there is to be a compromise to the name, then it has to be a composite name and it has to encompass the true ethnic identity of the people of FYROM, which is SLAVIC.
A Slavonic "Macedonia", Slavomacedonia has no need for statues of Alexander the Great and stadia of Philip II. The irredentism issues are put to the side. The inhabitants of Slavomacedonia speak Slavomacedonian and are called Slavomacedonians. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY ZERO CONFUSION WITH THE GREEK MACEDONIAN, NOW OR HISTORICALLY, with the Greek ancient Macedonians.
The road to reconciliation between the Slav Macedonians and Greeks will open widely and the issue that has released untold amounts of hatred from the side of the Slavomacedonians against the Greeks and despise from the side of the Greeks towards the "Skopianoi" will then be then thrown into the Axios/Vardar river and end up drowned into the Aegean Sea. The issue will then be once and for all resolved, END OF THE STORY!

WILL THE ALBANIANS ACCEPT SLAVOMACEDONIA? The question is unnecessary. If "Macedonian" is currently being accepted by them as an ethnic name for their Slavonic compatriots, what difference does it make for the Albanians if the passport says Slavomacedonia or Macedonia, as long as they are self identified as minority Albanians anyway?
Ali Ahmeti, the Albanian leader of DUI, the Albanian component party in Gruevski's administration is the man who, recently exclaimed in front of National media:
"CALL IT DISNEYLAND, CALL IT COCA COLA, WE DO NOT CARE AS LONG AS WE GET INTO NATO AND THE EU!"

Υ.Γ. Τέτοια ξεφτίλα, πως θα την αντέξουμε, να μας κοροιδεύει καί το παρδαλό κατσίκι σε λίγο! Γίναμε που γίναμε τσίρκο στα οικονομικά, να γίνουμε και στο Σκοπιανό! Την στιγμή που ο απωθητικός Γκρούης είναι πεσμένος στο χώμα με τον (Αλβανικό) σουγιά στο κόκκαλο καί το (Ευρωπαϊκό) λουρί στο σβέρκο...εμείς πάμε να τον αναδείξουμε Σκοπιανο (ήγουν "Βορειομακεδονικό")εθνικό Ήρωα!
Τρελαθήκαμε δηλαδή;
Η απλώς ετοιμάζουμε τα χαρτιά παράδοσης της Τσαμουριάς στους Κοσοβάρους, της βόρειας Κύπρου και των Νησιων του Αιγαίου στους Τούρκους, καί τα της "Βορείου Μακεδονίας" είναι το εισαγωγικό πρελούδιο; Ξεχάσαμε τα ΄Ιμια και το απύθμενο όνειδος στο οποίο μας βούλιαξε ο γονυπετής προς τον Κλίντον κύριος Σημίτης. Εάν τα ξεχάσαμε εμείς, οι Τούρκοι σίγουρα δεν τα ξεχάσανε, απλώς η όρεξή τους άνοιξε. Καλομάθαμε και εθισθήκαμε τόσο πολύ στις καρπαζιές και δεν μας νιάζει πιά;
Τελικά...μάθανε πως χαϊδευόμαστε, πλακώσανε και οι Ρόμα, συγνώμην, οι Ρομα-σκοπιανοί!
Εκεί μας καταντήσανε!
Η μὀνη μας ελπἰδα...άς ελπἰσουμε όλα αυτά να είναι λάθος πληροφόρηση!