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

Το παρόν άρθρο πρωτοεμφανίστηκε στο Αμερικανικό διαδυκτιακό περιοδικό Αμέρικαν Κρόνικλ, στις 14 Ιανουαρίου του 2010
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/136624
Mιλτιάδης Η. Μπόλαρης


Balkan Illusion - phantasia archaica:

"Zaika. This is one of the most interesting ancient Macedonian female names. It may represent a female form of the present day Macedonian "zajak" (rabbit). In any case, there are numerous examples of names taken from names of animals. The names Zaia (Zaja) and Zaiko (Zajko) are 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 and propagandist of pseudo-macedonism from FYROM.



Zaika/Ζάϊκα

The southern edge of ancient Paionia, the land of the Paionians, was originally starting from the Aegean coast of Northern Greece (Macedonia proper), went up into the southwestern part of what is now Bulgaria and then continued north to the central lands of what is now the ex-Yugoslav republic of Slavic Makedonija (ПОРАНЕШНАТА ЈУГОСЛОВЕНСКА РЕПУБЛИКА МАКЕДОНИЈА / FYROM). It included the lands on either side of the Axios/Αξιός river (ВАРДАР in Slavic) and the Strymon/Στρυμων river (СTРУМА in Slavic) and their respective watersheds.
Ancient Thrace included most of the lands of what is now Bulgaria, including parts of modern Romania as well as the provinces of Eastern Thrace of Turkey and Western Thrace of Greece. Thracians also lived in parts of Chalcidice and even Pieria, just north of mount Olympus.
Beginning around the 8th or 9th century BC, the Greek-speaking Macedonians started coming down from their original homelands in upper Macedonia(upper meant "mountainous" not "northern"), slowly pressing Thracians and Paionians out of the flat-lands in Pieria, Emathia and Amphaxitis. The Paionians gradually lost the coastline (early 5th cBC) and kept being pressed northward. A little more than a century later, in a series of campaigns between 358BC and 346BC Philip II of Macedon defeated the Paionians and extended his kingdom by either incorporating lands that previously belonged to the Paionians and to various neighboring Thracian tribes, or converting their kingdoms into Macedonian client states, creating a loyal buffer zone to his north, against attacks from the Illyrians and from other barbarians beyond the Danube. Two centuries later, Philip V / Φίλιππος Ε΄ feeling the pressure of the Romans and their Illyrian allies in a strategically defensive rather than offensive move, to stabilize his northern frontiers, shed all semblance of Paionian independence and incorporated their semi-independent kingdom into Macedon.
The Thracians suffered a similar fate, being slowly pushed north and east while many of their cities resigned to accepting incorporation into the Macedonian state, whether under Philip II, Alexander II (the Great) or later under Lysimachos/Λυσίμαχος (360 BC - 281 BC), an epigonos of Alexander who created his own Macedonian kingdom within Thrace proper. Philip, we know from history kept on shuffling populations around, bolstering his frontiers with Greek Macedonians and building new cities where needed, like Heracleia Lynkestis/Ηράκλεια Λυγκιστίς (Μοναστήρι/Bitola/Битола) in Pelagoneia or Veroia/Βέροια (Stara Zagora/Стара Загора) and Philippoupolis/Φιλιππούπολις (Plovdiv/Пловдив) in Thrace, or reorganizing cities like Callindeia/Καλλίνδεια, Amphipolis/Ἄμφίπολις or Crenides/Κρηνίδες (renamed: Philippoi/Φίλιπποι).
The ancient historians have left us a grim picture of this population engineering, of bringing barbarians into the cities to be assimilated and sending Greeks to be established in settlements along the frontiers, which Philip II used in his attempt to unify his dominions and the promotion of the Greek language was his tool to achieve this:

"7 Reversus in regnum, ut pecora pastores nunc in hibernos, nunc in aestivos saltus traiciunt, sic ille populos et urbes, ut illi vel replenda vel derelinquenda quaeque loca videbantur, ad libidinem suam transfert. 8 Miseranda ubique facies et excidio similis erat. 9 Non quidem pavor ille hostilis nec discursus per urbem militum erat, non tumultus armorum, non bonorum atque hominum rapina, 10 sed tacitus maeror et luctus, verentibus, ne ipsae lacrimae pro contumacia haberentur. 11 Crescit dissimulatione ipsa dolor, hoc altius demissus, quo minus profiteri licet. 12 Nunc sepulcra maiorum, nunc veteres penates, nunc tecta, in quibus geniti erant quibusque genuerant, 13 considerabant, miserantes nunc vicem suam, quod in eam diem vixissent, nunc filiorum, quod non post eam diem nati essent.
VI. Alios populos in finibus ipsis hostibus opponit; alios in extremis regni terminis statuit; quosdam bello captos in supplementis urbium dividit. 2 Atque ita ex multis gentibus nationibusque unum regnum populumque constituit."

Historiarum Philippicarum in Epitomen redacti A M Iuniano Iustino, Book VIII

"On his return to his kingdom, as shepherds drive their flocks sometimes into winter, sometimes into summer pastures, so he transplanted people and cities hither and thither, according to his caprice, as places appeared to him proper to be peopled or left desolate. The aspect of things was every where wretched, like that of a country ravaged by an enemy. There was not, indeed, that terror of a foe, or hurrying of troops through the cities, or seizure of property and prisoners, which are seen during a hostile invasion; but there prevailed a sorrow and sadness not expressed in words, the people fearing that even their very tears would be thought signs of discontent. Their grief was augmented by the very concealment of it, sinking the deeper the less they were permitted to utter it. At one time they contemplated the sepulchres of their ancestors at another their old household gods, at another the homes in which they had been born, and in which they had had families; lamenting sometimes their own fate, that they had lived to that day, and sometimes that of their children, that they were not born after it.6 Some people he planted upon the frontiers of his kingdom to oppose his enemies; others he settled at the extremities of it. Some, whom he had taken prisoners in war, he distributed among certain cities to fill up the number of inhabitants; and thus, out of various tribes and nations, he formed one kingdom and people."

Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus. Marcus Junianus Justinus

This is the best explanation of how Paeonians and Thracians eventually became Hellenic in speech, though many kept their names and religious beliefs as the epigraphical record amply shows. History, unfortunately is not lending a hand to her falsifiers.
The Romans eventually defeated Philip V in the battle of Cynos Cephalai (197 BC) and later Perseus in the battle of Pydna (168 BC), and Macedonia became a Roman province. During the Roman era, all areas previously under the Macedonians went through a period of bilingualism, with Greek eventually replacing Thracian and Paionian as the dominant language in the southern part of the Balkans. Unlike the northern lands of the Balkan Peninsula, Latin never made much inroad in Macedonia or lower Thrace. The coins of Macedonia kept on being issued in Greek, and all the funeral and votive inscriptions were written in Greek, reflecting the dominant Hellenic language of the area. By the dawn of the early Christian era, and certainly by the fourth century AD, the lower Balkans had become completely Hellenic-speaking areas, while the north had become Latinized in speech. The Jireček Line, has been used as the imaginary linguistic boundary separating the Hellenic-speaking and the Latin-speaking areas of the Balkans, before the Slavic invasions.

Russian map showing 7th-8th cAD entry of Slavs into Byzantine areas

The Slavs started raiding the south Balkans towards the mid to end of the 6th cAD, and by the 7th and 8th centuries AD they had breached the Danube frontier of the Byzantine Empire and had established themselves in many settlements in the Balkans. The Slavs had never been in contact with the ancient people of the Balkans, namely the Greeks, the Illyrians, the Thracians, the Dacians or the Paionians. The Albanians, another Balkan people, are related to the ancient Dacians, but during the Greek and Roman antiquity they were not living in what is now modern Albania. They are not related to the Illyrians, despite what their own state national mythology propagates. The Albanians moved south to their present location, sometime in the eleventh cAD, from their original the Carpathian homeland. The Romanians, although Latin in speech are to a great extend descended from the ancient Dacians too, as well as from Greek and Latin-speaking populations of Thrace and the Black Sea. The Thracians were either Latinized or Hellenized and many of their descendants became Slavic in speech after the Bulgarians and the Slavs took over part of their lands from Byzantium. Later on, some also became Turkish in speech and identity, and it is believed that the Slavic speaking Muslims of Thrace, the Pomaks/ Помаци/Πομάκοι are to a great degree of Thracian stock.
Most serious modern researchers seem to agree that the most probable original homeland of the Slavs was the Pripet Marshes, between Belorussia, Poland and Ukraine. The Slavic languages are grouped together with the Baltic languages in a common Balto-Slavic linguistic family. The Balkans as homeland of the proto-Slavs is as serious a theory as suggesting a Chinese descent for the inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent. It has only been suggested by discredited pseudo-scientific circles in Skopje, in the service of irredentist and ultra-nationalist goals.
Any attempt, to make a linguistic connection between the ancient inhabitants of these lands and the Slavs cannot be taken seriously by anyone except some extremist nationalist groups and their supporters in political parties like the VMRO, a fascist-irredentist group until recently in the list of terrorist groups of the US State Department but now the political party in power in Skopje.
It is easy for someone without the classical language background to get carried over and starting with some superficial phonetic similarities of an ancient name (Zaika) of a completely alien and now extinct language (in this case Thracian, as we shall prove) then connect it to a word of his own modern language (the Sloveno-macedonski dialect of Bulgarian) and finally try to explain one from the other. The Slavonic dialect spoken by the majority population in the former province of Yugoslavia that is now FYROM, cannot be credibly named "Macedonian", for many reasons, chief among which is that it creates confusion between a modern Slavonic dialect and the Greek dialect of the ancient Macedonians. Secondly, the Slavic Macedonians are not the only people that live in Macedonia. In FYROM itself there are Albanians, Vlachs, other Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians, Serbs etc. In Greece, where the vast majority of the land of historic Macedonia lies, the spoken language is Greek. Therefore, calling the Slavonic dialect spoken in parts of Macedonia THE "Macedonian" language is a complete misnomer, and one with political undertones which many unsuspecting linguistic scientists naively ignire. It is also an attempt to usurp a GENERAL geographic term and make a PARTICULAR ethnic term out of it. Macedonia, the geographic area, is first and foremost inhabited by Greeks, secondly by Slavs, thirdly by Albanians, fourthly by Bilingual Vlachs, then by Roma-Gypsies, Jews, Turks, Serbs, Bulgarians, etc. Not one of these nationalities should have the right to usurp the general geographic determinant name for themselves. After all, it is not the right of some of the Slavs who live in a small part of historic Macedonia to call themselves by the name of the province that belongs to all the other nationalities living in it. The Greeks of Macedonia are very content to call themselves Greeks by nationality and language, and Macedonians by cultural and provincial identity, and so do the Albanians, the Vlachs, the Bulgarians and others.
If we want to be taken seriously, we have to go to the sources and base our research on what is epigraphically available.
We have located three Inscriptions with the name Zaika/Ζάϊκα. Τhe first two are from Sintike/Σιντική, an area on the upper run of the river Strymon/Στρυμών, in Bulgaria, just north of Greece. The third one if close to Prilep/Прилеп, inside FYROM:

IGBulg IV 2311
Macedonia : Sintike: Vranya
Βειθυς Παραμόνου ἑαυ-
τῷ καὶ Ζαικᾳ τῇ γυ-
ναικεὶ καὶ Πυρουσαλᾳ τῇ θυγα-
Beithys son of Paramonos to him-
self and Zaika his wi-
fe and Pyrousala his daught-

We have three names here: Paramonos/Παράμονος is most certainly a Greek name but it is quite possibly also a Greek/Paionian isogloss. It is obviously related to the name Parmenion/Παρμενίων, of the famous general of Philip II and Alexander the Great. It has been suggested (Ian Worthington) that Parmenion himself was of Paionian ethnic descent. Parmenion means "son of Parmenon" (the ending -ion notes descend) and Parmenon is obviously a cut off version of Par(a)menon/Παραμένων (Delta I 642,7 , Egypt and Nubia: Παραμένων με ἀνέθηκε τὠπόλλωνι.), "the one with staying power", which makes it similar in etymology to the Latin name Constantius.

Beithys/Βειθυς seems to appear in the epigraphic record along with other Thracian names. It is probably Thracian. It is certainly not Hellenic, neither in form nor etymology. It is also found written as Bithys/Βιθυς (ΙGBulg IV, 2322), and in the very Thracian form: Beithykenthos/Βειθυκενθος (IGBulg III, 1714).
Pyrousala is a Thracian name too. The word Pyr sounds like the Greek word for fire, but pyros/πυρός is also the maise, the barley seed and it is not exclusive to Greek, so its appearance in Thracian should not surprise us. We will encounter this name further down once again, and we will try to explore a plausible etymology. Salas is a well attested Thracian name, as shown in the following inscription:
IGBulg III,1 1441 [Σαλ]α̣ς Βειθυος. εὐχήν.
Zaika is inconclusive for now.

We now go to the second inscription, which is from SW Bulgaria, part of ancient Sintike/Σιντική

IGBulg IV 2303
Macedonia : Sintike: Kovachevo
Πύρρος Ἀγάθωνος ∙ ἑαυ-
τῷ καὶ Ζαικᾳ τῇ γυναι-
κὶ ἑαυτοῦ ζώων ἐποίει.
Pyrros son of Agathon him-
self and Zaika his wi-
fe and while still alive he made it.

Out of the three names on this inscription, Pyrros/Πύρρος and his patronym Agathon/Ἄγάθων are both Greek names, while Zaika is definitely not.
Our third inscription is from FYROM, close to the town of Prilep/
IG X,2 2 164
Macedonia : Pelagonia: Vitolište: Caracina niva Prilep
Ι#⁷․[— — —]ΛΝ Μυρω-
[— — — —] καὶ Ζαικα
[— — —]ο̣ς ἑ[α]υτο [— — —]LN
Myro-
[— — — —]and Zaika
[— — —]os himself

Myron/Μύρων is a Hellenic name, (see Myron/Μύρων the Athenian sculptor, known by "The discobolus", the discus thrower, mid-fifth century BC). Zaika/Ζάϊκα, once again, is not Greek.

How can we be so confident in saying that Zaika is either a Thracian or a Paionian name? First of all, it is encountered in lands historically inhabited by both Paionians, Thracians and Greeks, but it is not a Greek name. Since it also appears all too often in areas too far east (in modern Bulgaria) to be Illyrian, then the logical deduction is that is has to be either Thracian or Paionian. Geography, therefore, is our first clue, but the epigraphical record is what defines it, and clarifies the issue for us, so let us proceed further down. We expand our research and we find a name that sounds very similar to Zaika / Ζαικα appearing on an inscription: Zaikis / Ζαικις. It is from historic Macedonia, though the place of its original exact location is not known.
SEG 52:651
Macedonia : Unkn. Provenance
Ζαικις Ἀνδρονίκου Βαστικείλᾳ τῷ ἀνδρὶ καὶ τοῖς τέκνοις
Ἀνδρονείκῳ καὶ Ἀλλωπόρει καὶ Μητόκῳ καὶ ἑατῇ, ζῶσα.
Zaikis, daughter of Andronikos to Bastikeila, her husband and to her children
Andronikos and Alloporis and Metokos and to herself, while living.

The names Alloporis/Αλλωπορις and Bastikeila/Βαστικείλᾳ are clearly Thracian. The ending "-poris" means "the son of" and is a typical ending for a Thracian name. Epte-poris/Επτή̣-πορις Dindi-poris/Δινδι-πορις, Dili-poris/Διλι-πορις, Raskou-poris/Ρασκού-πορις, Ketri-poris/Κετρι-πορις, etc.
The name Andronikos/Ανδρόνικος (female: Andronike/Ανδρονίκη) is clearly a Greek name from andras/άνδρας, man and nike/νίκη, victory: "Victorious over men"..
Metokos/Μητοκoς sounds like a Greek name but it is not, unless it is a dialectical paraphrase of Metoikos/Μέτοικος (μετά/meta, after + οίκος/oikos, home), meaning the immigrant resident. As Metokos it only appears in a few inscriptions in Thrace, always coupled with other Thracian names: Metokos son of Taroulos/Μητοκος Ταρουλου (IGBulg I² 400), or Metokos son of Mestos/Μήτοκος Μέστ[ο]υ (IG XII,Suppl 471).
Finally, we come to Zaikis: The name Zaikis/Ζαικις is too similar-sounding to Zaika not to be related, both probably being different forms (male-female) of the same name.

Extending our search to names of the area that start with Zai- / Ζαι- , that there are indeed several names to be found on inscriptions, all from historic Peonia, part of which is now in Bulgaria.
IGBulg V 5918
Macedonia : Sintike: Parthikopolis (Sandanski): Laskarevo
Δείδος Πυρούλᾳ τῷ πατρ[ί],
Ζαιβαλῳ, Πυρούλᾳ τῷ ὑῷ {υἱῷ},
Πυρούλᾳ τῷ μεικρῷ ζῶν ἐπύ-
Deidos son of Pyroulas to his father
Zaibalos, to his son
Pyroulas to the little one epy-

None of the names is Greek here, though the Paionians or Thracians who wrote these are on their way to become Hellenized, since we see them using Greek but with spelling variances, betraying variances in dialectical pronunciation (ei/ει instead of i/ι, y/υ instead or yi/υι). The name Pyroulas, is a typical Thracian name, attested as "Pyrumerulas (variants: Pyrmerulas, Pyrymerylas, Pirmerulas), which occurs as an epithet of the Thracian deity of Heros", according to the Bulgarian Linguist Ivan Duridanov. Duridanov believes it to be related to the Greek word pyros/πυρός the maize, and he is suggesting a meaning of something like: The Powerful one of the maize seed. I would say we would not be off the mark if we were to expand it to mean something like: The Great Farmer, or Farmer Protector, which the Thracian mounted Hero was.
Deidos sounds Greek but it is probably a Thracian name too. The ending "-dos" is not unusual in Thracian onomastics. The Thracian God Zberthurdos was the closest equivalent to being the Thracian "Zeus".
Zaibalos is most probably related to Zaika and Zaikis, possibly its male version.

Another Inscription from now Bulgarian Thrace speaks of a Zaipas/Ζαιπας. It seems plausible that this name is linguistically also related to the name Zaika/Ζαικα.
IGBulg IV 2112
Thrace and Moesia Inferior
Thrace and the Lower Danube (IG X)
IGBulg IV 2112
Thrace and Moesia Inferior
Ροιμος
Ταρσου Ζαι-
πᾳ συμβί-
ῳ τῇ καλ-
Roimos
son of Tarsos to Zai-
pa his life part-
ner the most beau-

Yet another inscription has been found in the same area, this one with the name Zairdainos/Ζαιρδαίνος:
IGBulg III,2 1743
Thrace and Moesia Inferior
Ζαιρδαι[νῳ — — — — — —]
Αυλουζεν̣[— — — — — —]
to Zairdan[os — — — — — —]
son of Aulouzeṇ[— — — — — —]

Zairdanos again starts with "Zai-" and the ending "-rdanos" is very Thracian, reminiscent of and quite probably related to the Thracian ethnonym: Dardanos. Dardania was roughly the land enclosing what is now Kosovo and the northern part of FYROM, and Skopje, far from being a Macedonian city, ever, was the capital of Dardania, yet now it is the capital of the so called Republica "Makedonija".

Yet another Thracian name that starts with Zai- / Ζαι- is found again in Bulgarian Moesia:
IGBulg I² 130
Thrace and Moesia Inferior
[υ]τ̣ῷ καὶ τῇ γ̣[υναι]-
κὶ Ζαινειλᾳ Η[․c.4․]
[τ]ὸ̣ μνημεῖ̣[ον ἔστησε].
...self and to his wi-
fe Zainela H.......
the monument he erected

An interesting name appears in another Greek inscription from Sintike, by the Bulgarian city of Sandanski, ancient Parthikopolis:
Northern Greece (IG X)
IGBulg IV 2291
Macedonia : Sintike: Parthikopolis (Sandanski): Laskarevo
τῷ ἀδελφῷ
Δ̣ε̣ιτουζαι-
που ἡ γυνὴ
Ἀμύντου
to brother
Deitouzaipas'
wife

Δ̣ε̣ιτουζας / Deitouzaipas seems to be a combination of two well-attested Thracian names that we just encountered above: Deidos/Δειδος and Zaipas/Ζαιπας.

Another indication that Zaika/Ζαικα is most probably a Thracian name is in on some inscriptions from Thrace, Northern Greece and Paionia from the Roman times, long before the descent of the Bulgarians and the Slavs (during the middle ages) into these areas:

SEG 53:663
Macedonia : Sintike: Neine (G. Gradeshnitsa-Ilindentsi)
Σεβήρᾳ τῇ συμβίῳ καὶ Ἰουλίῳ Μαξίμῳ τῷ
υἱῷ καὶ Ζαικαιδενθῃ τῇ ἀδελφῇ κατωχη-
κόσι κατεσκεύασεν μνήμης ἕνεκα.
…to Severa his wife, and to Ioulios Maximos his
son and to Zaikaidenthe, his sister, to be buried,
he erected in their memory

Northern Greece (IG X)
Mt. Olympe 479,28
Macedonia : Pieria: Nea Ephesos
Ζαιπύρου Μέξτεως
(of) Zaipyros son of Mextes

Ζαικαιδενθη/Zaikaidenthe means child of Zaika, in Thracian. The endings -denthes /-δενθης and -denthe /-δενθη are typical of many names in the Thracian language. It means: "child of", equivalent to English "-son": John-Johnson, James-Jameson, etc.
Examples: Καρδένθης/Kardenthes, Σκαιδένθης/Skaidenthes, Βαργιδένθης/Bargidenthes, Αυλουδένθης/Auloudenthes, Επτακένθης/Eptakenthos - a frequent Thracian name ´Epta´s (a goddess) child´, Διασκενθης/Diascenthus - ´god´s child´. Dia is related to Greek Διός/Dios (genitive of Zeus), and to the Latin Deus, among others. We also find: Δενθηβαρις / Denthevaris, with δένθη/denthe appearing here in the beginning of the word.

Zaika/Ζαικα, Zaikaidenthe/Ζαικαιδενθη, Zaikis/Ζαίκις, Zairdainos/Ζαιρδαίνος, Zainela/Ζαινείλα and Ζαίπα/Zaipa are all Thracian names, for most of which we do not know the exact meaning. The only thing we can do is speculate basing ourselves on existing linguistic data.

The first clue comes from Bulgarian Thracologist professor Ivan Duridanov´s list of Thracian names, where we find the following names: Zipyros, Zeipyros, Ziepyrus, Zypyr, Zipyron, Zeipyron, all of which mean: God´s boy, God´s son.
Zan/Ζάν (genitive: Zanos/Ζανός, plural: Zanes/Ζάνες) is but another name for Zeus/Ζεύς. Zea/Ζέα (a name that survives in one of Peireus´three ports even today: Limani Zeas/Λιμάνι Ζέας), Hesechios tells us was another name for the underworld Goddess hekate/Εκάτη, Godess also of three-roads junctions. Zeus in genitive is Dios/Διός, a cognate of Deus in Latin and Theos/Θεός in Greek, all of which mean "God". Zeus and Deus and Dios might seem very different at first sight, but the letter Ζ/Ζ is interchangeable with D/Δ in some Greek dialects: Dia/Διά, in the Aeolian dialect was pronounced and written as Ζa/Ζά. Dia nyktos/διά νυκτός, through the night, in Aeolian would be: za nyktos/ζα νυκτός. Zeter/Ζητήρ is Zeus in Cyprus (Ζεύς εν Κύπρω, according to Hesechios, again), which seems like a possible paraphrase of Zeus-Pater, a cognate of the Latin Jupiter. The interchangeability between Z and D exists not only in Greek but in Thracian too:
Deopus - ´son of god´, Deospor, Deospuris - ´son of god´, Desakenthos - ´god´s child´, Diaskenthos, Diascenthus, Diascinthus - ´god´s child´, Diazelmis - ´god´s descendant´, Diazenis, Diuzenes ´born of Zeus, divine´, Dizapes - ´god´s son´, Dizapor - ´god´s son, boy´, Dizazelmis - ´god´s child, descendant, are cognates of the Thracian names we encountered earlier: Zipyros, Zeipyros, Ziepyrus, Zypyr, Zipyron, Zeipyron.
Proposing that Zaika is a Thracian name, with a name that means the divine one, or the blessed by the gods, in the spirit of equivalent Greek names Theone/Θεόνη or Theone/Θεώνη and Διώνη/Διόνη or Dione/Διόνη, for example, is more plausible to me than trying to equate this name with no regard to historical geography to the Slavonic rabbit, or hare.
Professor Donski from Skopje, FYROM, tells us that "Zaika…is one of the most interesting ancient Macedonian female names. It may represent a female form of the present day Macedonian "zajak" (rabbit)".
Let us see what the Bulgarians, who never claimed to be descendants of the ancient Macedonians, call their hare/rabbit: заек/zaek, which is the same as the Slavomacedonians of the Prespa region, call it too: a very Bulgarian-sounding заек/zaek, instead of the proper, Skopje-sanctioned: заjак/zajak. The Serbs and Croats give it a slightly different twist: зец/zec and: zec. The Czechs call it: zajíc, the Slovenians: zajec, which is identical to the Ukrainian hare: заєць/zajec. The Upper Sorbians, a Slavic minority in Germany, whose name betrays ancient fraternal connections to the Serbians of the Balkans call their rabbit: zajac, which is identical in pronunciation to the Russian: заяц/zajac, Belarusian: заяц/zajac, and Slovak: zajac and almost identical to the Polish: zając.
Now, I will have a very hard time trying to convince myself that the Slovenomakedonski заjак/zajak or заек/zaek for that matter, is ancient Macedonian and that Zaika is a hare-related name. All the Slavs have similar sounding and linguistically very tightly related rabbits/hares. In fact, the Slavonic long-eared lovable creatures are linguistically very close to the Baltic ones, the Latvian: zaķis and the Lithuanian: zuikis. This, of course, is to be expected, since the Baltic and the Slavic languages used to be part of the same linguistic Balto-Slavic group, before they split, sometime in the first millennium BC, long before (probably a thousand years or so) some of their descendants descended to the warm and fertile lands of Thrace, Paionia and Macedonia. Incidentally, the hare in Ancient Greek: λαγός/lagós and λαγώς/lagós or λαγωός/lago'os and in Modern Greek: λαγός/lagós.

Πτολεμαίου Βασιλέως / (belonging to) King Ptolemaios

This brings us to Ptolemy Lagos, the Macedonian general who later became Pharaoh of Egypt: Ptolemy, the childhood friend and comrade of Alexander the Great, whose full name was Ptolemaios Lagos/Πτολεμαίος Λάγου. He is the one who started the dynasty of the Ptolemies/Πτολεμαίοι, who were also called Lagidai/Λαγίδαι, from Lagos/Λάγος or Λαγός, the name of Ptolemaios´ father. Ptolemaios himself gladly abandoned his own rabbit/hare-sounding patronym once he himself became a king, the Pharaoh of Hellenistic Egypt. He adopted the prosonym which the Rhodians in gratitude offered him: Soter/Σωτήρ, the Savior! The hare connection of Ptolemaios Lagos is possible and almost obvious, but another, more plausible explanation exists, especially given the fact that Lagos must have been a Macedonian chief himself (little if anything is known of him, and Ptoleμaios spread the royal rumor that Philip II was in fact his own father from Arsinoe/Αρσινόη, his mother).
The alternative theory would be that the name Lagos/Λαγος is possibly a dialectical short rendering of Lagetes/Λαγέτης or Lagetas/Λαγέτας. Lagetas is derived from Λάας-Λαός, meaning "the people" and specifically, in ancient Greek, "the people in arms", the army, and from ago/άγω, to lead. Lagetas/Λαγέτας appears also much earlier, in pre-Homeric Lawagetas/ΛαFαγέτας. The earliest attestation of Lawagetas/ΛαFαγέτας is in the Linear B tablets of Pylos and Knossos: ra-wa-ke-ta, transliterated by Michael Kendris, the decipherer of the Linear B tablets as: Lawagetas/ΛαFαγέτας, "military commander". In modern Greek Laos/Λαός means "people", and Lagetas or Lagetes and Lawagetas can be rendered as Laoegetes/Λαοηγέτης, or Laou egetes/Λαού ηγέτης, both meaning "leader of the people". The transformation of the -es and/or -as ending into an -os ending can be confusing but not at all unusual in Greek. The same evolution can be seen in the Greek word for "hunter":
Achaean-Linear B Greek: ku-na-ke-ta =, transliterated as Kynagetas/κυναγετας from kyn/κυν = dog + egetas/ηγετας=leader [ku-na-ke-ta-i (PY Na 248, TH) [kuna:geta:hi] 'hunters'32. 28. a-stems, loc. plur., Ref.: Autosegmental Phonology and Word-Internal -h- in Mycenaean Greek,  S Colvin - 2006], meaning literally: "leader of the dogs", hunter. Kynagetas/κυναγετας developed into Kynegos/κυνηγος from:
Kynagetas/Κυναγετας --- Kynegos/Κυνηγος
Likewise: Lawagetas/ΛαFαγετας --- Lagetes/Λαγέτης - Lagos/Λαγος
If this is correct, then the rabbit connection needs to be erased completely from the patronym of Ptolemaios. We need to be suspicious of easy, phonetic-based explanations. Lagos sounds exactly like a hare in both ancient and modern Greek, but probably not so in all the Hellenic dialects. Macedonian Greek was notorious in omitting vowels for example, and this can be very confusing for us today. Many Greeks still think that Perdikas/Περδίκας the Macedonian general took his name from perdix/πέρδιξ, the partridge bird. On a closer inspection, his name is actually from the preposition peri/περί, around, concerned with, and dika/δίκα δίκη, justice: Peridikas/Περιδίκας. In this sense it is linguistically and grammatically closer to that most famous of Athenian names: Perikles/Περικλής, whose name is also derived from peri/περί and is combined with kleos/κλέος, "glory".

Tito's geostrategic dream: Greater Yugoslavija from the Adriatic to the Black Sea

The modern Македонски Словени/ Makedonski Sloveni, the self-proclaimed "ethnic Macedonians" have absolutely no linguistic or historical relation to the ancient Greek Macedonians, or the Thracians and Paionians of Macedonia proper. They inhabit a sizeable part of the land that used to be ancient Paionia, and only tiny parts of ancient Macedonia and ancient Thrace. Misnaming what is now the Former Yugoslav Republic of Makedonija as "Macedonia" might have made sense at some point, from the perspective of the advancement of Tito´s Yugoslav expansionist dreams. These dreams included the creation of a Titoist fiefdom from the Adriatic to the Aegean sea and to the shores of the Black Sea. The hope, of course, was to incorporate not only northern Greece but the whole of Bulgaria too, and extend this Balkan Mega-Sclavenia to the Black sea. This did not see the light of day, due to the Stalin-Tito break, or possibly, Tito´s demands may have caused it. These considerations, dating back to the 1940´s and 1950´s have no basis on either geography or history and never had any. Jugoslavija, instead of usurping the rest of the Balkan Peninsula, Greek Macedonia and Bulgaria included, ended up breaking up itself, exploding in flames and genocide during the 1990´s.
This process is still painfully with us until now, simmering in Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and FYROmacedonia. It is in all these areas that short-sighted Euro-American interests imposed temporary solutions that sought to create mini-Yugoslavias or Mini-Albanias or mini-Afghanistans in the middle of the proverbial Balkan powder keg. None of them has any long term future, not under their respective leaderships anyway and not the way they have been formed and imposed upon the locals, fermenting oceans of ethnic hatred in the process. These ethnic morphemes are all accidents waiting to happen. It is only a matter of when and how, not a question of if.
Edo einai Balkania, den einai paixe gelase/ Εδώ είναι Βαλκάνια, δεν είναι παίξε γέλασε, is how music composer and song-writer Dionysis Savopoulos /Διονύσης Σαββόπουλος prophetically put it in the song Ballos, back in the early 1970´s: This is the Balkans…this is not a play-and-laugh field! For the international community to be tolerating, nay, encourage Skopjan irredentism and extreme ultra-nationalism that borderlines fascism and fringe political lunacy, like the policies of the governing VMRO party of prime minister Nikola Gruevski/Никола Груевски, and all this in a country that for all practical purposes is nothing but a microcosm of Yugoslavia is utterly incomprehensible to the locals. One of the reasons, besides flawed and idiotically near-sighted geopolitics (of the type that led the US into quagmires in Iraq, or Vietnam and now Afghanistan) that Globomagicians-in-training from Washington, London and Brussels are gleefully playing with matches in the midst of the Balkan powder keg is simple: it is not their own backyard! Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbs want none of that and they view the likes of Nikola Gruevski and his VMRO political goons as dangerous left-overs from ages past.
To bring this home, and to see how Greeks, Bulgarians, and Serbs view the neo-Ottoman-Great Turkish, Kosovarian-Great Albanian and Skopjan-Antico-Slavomakedonci dreams of Grandeur and land annexation, is to ponder at an analogy: how would the US government and the American people react to any talk of Mexican irredentism, vis-à-vis California, Texas and New Mexico, to name a few states, that some hotheaded Politicos in Mexico city would demand to carve away from the USA and annex to Mexico?

It does not sound good, now, does it? This is, unfortunately the raison d'être behind professor Donski´s laughable theories. They are a medley of nonsense in support of a false and utterly imaginary ethnogennesis, trying to prove that somehow, the Slavs of FYROM are the direct descendents of the Greek-speaking ancient Macedonians, and therefore, Greeks, who have a historically and archaeologically proven presence of four thousand years in Macedonia, should be considered invaders that need to be thrown into the Aegean sea. When you play with history, history has a way to get its revenge. The archaeological and epigraphic record always comes to our rescue and proves professor Donski (and all his fellow propagandists in Skopje) wrong. All they are left with is folk etymology, invented pseudo-history and bogus science.
The limits of folk etymology are very narrow and they rarely hit the mark. Pulling a proverbial rabbit out of a Jugoslavic hat, is not as easy as it seems at first, as it is amply illustrated by our point in case: a counterfeit identity is not going to make a Sloveno-Makedonka out of an ancient Thracian girl. Zaika/Ζάϊκα, our Thracian girl is as closely related to Zajak/Заjaк the rabbit as the girl with the fluffy bunny ears, shown at the beginning of this article, is.
Pretending is not the same as being: PRETENDING to be a Macedonian does not make you an "ethnic" Macedonian. Skopje´s propaganda machine has been tirelessly at work, since 1944, trying to bolster an unsustainable national cohesion (and to avoid Yugoslavia´s fate of dissolution) through an officially-sanctioned pseudo-Macedonian forged ethnic identity. Reality has a way of getting back to those who disregard it. A person that escapes his own reality ends up with a split personality (clinically diagnosed as Dissociative Identity Disorder-DID). Tragic as it is for a person, it can be devastating when applied to a whole population by a repressive state apparatus that "knows best", as it happened with Tito´s former Yugoslav Republic of Makedonija. The permanent identity crisis that has plagued this mini state from its inception has spilled over, creating problems of ethnic tension, hatred and irredentist passions for everyone else in this volatile Balkan neighborhood. This obvious clash with reality has created a national obsession with identity-searching within the majority of the population in FYROM: a Torbeshi (Bulgarian-speaking Muslim Slav) thinks he is a Turk, a Vlach Greek thinks he is a Slav and a Slav thinks he is a Macedonian Greek (though violently refuses to accept that the Hellenism of the Macedonians). More often than not, the pseudo-Makedonist state propaganda´s version of ethnic reality transcends into the realm of the bizarre and the surreal crosses over and establishes itself well within the borders of the outright ludicrous, ending up with such national-identity-bolstering gems like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=RLCj7Luu5Ko

Our Thracian Zaika/Ζάϊκα notwithstanding, pulling propaganda rabbits out of a hat seems to be part of the daily Show in Skopje´s "Greater Macedonija - Fantasija Balkanika" Circus.


FURTHER READING – REFERENCES:
http://epigraphy.packhum.org/inscriptions/main
Philip II of Macedonia, by Ian Worthington, Yale university Press, 2008
Historiarum Philippicarum in Epitomen redacti A M. Iuniano Iustino, Book VIII
Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus. Marcus Junianus Justinus
translation by John Selby Watson. London 1853
http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/justin/english/trans8.html
Езикът на траките/The Language of the Thracians, by Ivan Duridanov, Nauka i izkustvo, Sofia, 1976 http://groznijat.tripod.com/thrac/index.htmlpaionia
Greek-English Lexicon, Liddell & Scott, Oxford, 1951 (1843)
Hσύχιος/Hesychios, Λεξικόν, Aρχαία Ελληνική Γραμματεία, "Οι Ελληνες»», Οδυσσέας Χατζόπουλος, Athens 2004
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBcJp1dywHA
Linear B – An introduction. J.T.Hooker, Bristol Classical Press, London, 2001
The Decipherment of Linear B, John Chadwick, Cambridge University Press, 1958

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

Article originally published on may 3, 2009, in the American Chronicle:
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/101173

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" languages)."
"Apell(es). The root of this name contains the noun "apel" (a call) which we have in the present day Macedonian language"
From: "Similarities between ancient Macedonian and today's' Macedonian Culture (Linguistics and Onomastics)", by: Aleksandar Donski, celebrity folk "historian" from FYROM.

Appeles/Ἀπελλής

Ephoros, son of Demophilos, from Kyme/Εφορος Δημοφιλου Κυμαιος was born about 100 BC. He wrote a 30-book history of the world, from the descent of the Heraclidae (the Dorians) to the years just before the death of Phillip ΙΙ. No lesser a historian than Polybios himself considered Euphorus' monumental work to be the first attempt ever at a writing of a universal history.

Euphorus' work has regrettably disappeared, but in one of his surviving fragments it is that we hear of a beautiful story, a myth about the fabled parentage of the greatest poet of them all: Homer. According to Euphorοs, some distant time back, three brothers lived in Kyme/Κυμη, Apelles/Ἀπελλῆς, Maeon/Μαίων and Dion/Δίων. Before he died, Apelles entrusted his daughter Kritheis/Κριθηίς (written also as: Kretheis/Κρηθηίς) to his brother Maeon/Μαίων. Maeon violated his own niece Kretheis and then betrothed her to a man from Smyrna, called Phemios. One day that Kretheis had gone down to the river Meles/Μελης to do her laundry, as was the usual way to wash cloths in that age, she went into labor and there, by the river Meles she gave birth to a boy. She named him Melesigenes/Μελησιγενης (born of Meles).

Based on the meaning of the name, some say that Kretheis was actually violated by the river Meles himself (all rivers were Gods in those ancient times) and this is how the boy eventually got his name. This last story is what the people of Smyrna believed and accepted as being the true story. The baby boy Melesigenes grew up to become the celebrated poet, the blind man of epic poetry: Homer/Ομηρος himself. (Source: «Epitomo Lexico Ellenikes Mythologias-Επίτομο λεξικό Ελληνικής Μυθολογίας», εκδ. οίκος Χάρη Πάτση, Athens/Αθήνα 1969. Müller, original quote of Euphorus in: "Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum" (FHG), Bd. 1 & 3, Paris 1841-1849).
Apelles/Ἀπελλῆς, then, is what the myth passes down to us as being the name of Homer's grandfather.

Leaving the age of myth, we step into history, four centuries later and into the turbulent times of 4th century BC. Not far from Smyrna, in the Ionian city of Colophon, as most people agree, another man of the arts was born, destined to steal Homer's Poetic fame in a different discipline of the Arts: Painting. Of course, like with every famous man, more than one place, (in his case the island of Cos/Κως, in the Dodecanese/Δωδεκανησα islands) claims to have been his birthplace.

Apelles/Ἀπελλῆς (flourished 352-308 BC) studied under the celebrated painter and Art theorist Pamphilos of Sikyon/Παμφιλος ο Σικυωνειος. He is said to have combined his native Ionia's graceful lines with the Dorian school's simplicity. His fame quickly spread throughout the Greek world and he was soon invited by Phillip II to become the court painter of the Macedonian palace in Pella. Alexander retained Apelles as painter in his court and he refused to have his portrait done by any other painter. Some of his famous works include the portrait of Alexander the Great holding a thunderbolt, exhibited at the temple of Artemis in Ephesos, and Aphrodite Anadyomene, which was taken from the Asclepeion of Cos to Rome and Augustus dedicated it to the shrine of Caesar.

Venerem exeuntem e mari divus Augustus dicavit in delubro patris Caesaris, quae anadyomene vocatur "His [Apelles'] Aphrodite emerging from the Sea was dedicated by his late lamented Majesty Augustus in the Shrine of his father Caesar; it is known as the Anadyomene." Pliny, Natural History (XXXV.91)
The female model for Aphrodite Anadyomene, was a girl considered to have been the first mistress of Alexander the Great, the Larissian Kampaspe/Καμπάσπη, whom Alexander later gave as a gift to Apelles, recognizing that Appeles was more appreciative of her beauty than he himself was and had fallen in love with her.

Considering that none of his work survived the end of Antiquity, his fame as the greatest painter of the ancient world, made him the envy of Renascence painters to whom scant descriptions of his paintings exerted a disproportionately great influence.

There are of course numerous men of antiquity named Apelles, one being among the 70 (O' in Greek numerals) proto-martyrs of the early Orthodox Church:

Την κιθάραν του Πνεύματος την έξάχορδον, τήν μελωδήσασαν κόσμω τας υπέρ νουν δωρεάς, ως έκφάντορας Χριστού άνευφημήσωμεν, Στάχυν Άμπλίαν Άπελλήν συν Ναρκίσσω, Ούρβανόν, και Άριστόβουλον άμα' ως γαρ Απόστολοι θείοι, χάριν αίτούνται ταις ψυχαίς ημών.
Άπολυτίκιον. Ήχος πλ. α'
The six chord guitar of the Spirit, the one that melodiously played to the world in support of gifts to the mind as a revealer of Christ we worshipfully praise Stachys, Amplias, Apelles and Narcissos, Urbanus and Aristoboulos together since as holy Apostles, demand grace for our souls.
Apolytikion, Echos plagios α'

This early Christian Apelles is known to have followed Paul to Rome
"Άπελλήν τον δόκιμον εν Χριστώ" (Ρωμ. Στ' 10)
"Apelles the approved in Christ" Romans 16:10

Apelles the proto-martyr is known to have died a martyr's death in Smyrna (yet another Smyrna connection but now with a different Apelles).

Every city in Greece was considered to be a separate and independent state, with its own laws, traditions, army and foreign policy. The only exceptions were the city was considered as part of a whole state entity were the Greek kingdoms of Epeiros, Macedonia and on occasion Sicily and Thessaly, where there were kings (basileis/βασιλείς) or dictators (tyrannoi/τύραννοι) that could rule over an extended territory, in which territory the cities had far more limited autonomy.

Some Balkan historical revisionists habitually hide behind the fact that few written monuments exist (the famous Pella katadesmos and funerary inscriptions are the only ones to date) of the Macedonian dialect (the Macedonians spoke their colloquial Northwestern Greek dialect but wrote most everything official in Attic Greek, the "proper" Greek of their age) to put forward a claim that the Macedonians did not speak Greek. They are at a loss to explain the fact that the proper names of all the known Macedonians, the names of all the cities that they built, their military terminology and bureaucratic nomenclature is all Greek.
Finally, all of the names of the months of the ancient Macedonians were Greek, and, most importantly, their name combination unique to Macedonia. This means that the Macedonians did not simply copy the names of the Macedonian months wholesale from another city state (otherwise they would have copied intact a calendar of another state)! This is is proof that the Macedonian calendar was an old, traditional calendar, which while it shared most of the names of the months with other Greek state calendars, it was unique in its own combination of names of months to the Macedonians!
Why is the Macedonian an important calendar? Because it regulated not only the lives of the people in Macedonia, but after Alexander's trail blazing conquest of the East, it also regulated the lives of people throughout Hellenistic Asia and Egypt.

For many years after the collapse of Macedonian power in Persia and Media, of modern Iran, the Persians still used the Greek language as a contract language of choice and the Macedonian calendar, to contact their business. An inscription of around 88-87BC from Medea, in Northern Iran is mentioning the Macedonian month Apellaios:
Regions : Greater Syria and the East : Media
IK Estremo oriente 454 IK Estremo oriente 279 IK Estremo oriente 455
Media — Avroman — 88/7 bc — JHS 35.1915.22-65
βασιλεύοντος βασιλέων Ἀρσάκου Εὐεργέτου Δικαίου Ἐπιφα-
νοῦς καὶ Φιλέλληνος, καὶ βασιλισσῶν Σιάκης τε τῆς ὁμοπατρίας
αὐτοῦ ἀδελφῆς καὶ γυναικὸς καὶ Ἀρυαζάτης τῆς ἐπικαλουμένη[ς]
Αὐτομὰ τῆς ἐγ βασιλέως μεγάλου Τιγράνου καὶ γυναικὸς αὐτ[οῦ]
καὶ Ἀζάτης τῆς ὁμοπατρίας αὐτοῦ ἀδελφῆς καὶ γυναικός, ἔτους εκσʹ
μηνὸς Ἀπελλαίου, ἐν ὑπαρχείᾳ Βαισείροις πρὸς σταθμῷ Βαιθαβαρ-
τοις ἐν κώμῃ Κωπάνει,...
While king of kings being Arsaces the Euergetis (the Benefactor) and Dikaios (the Just) and Epiphanes (the Distinguished) and Philhellen (who loves Greeks) and his queens being Siake his compatriot sister and wife, and Aryazate the so called Automa, who is of the great king Tigranes and his wife, and Azate his compatriot sister and wife, in the year εκσʹ in the month of Apellaios, in the province Baiseirois, towards the station Baithabartois, in the township of Kopanei....

A similar in tone inscription comes from Hellenistic Egypt, from 238BC:
Regions : Egypt, Nubia and Cyrenaïca : Egypt and Nubia
Milne, Cairo Mus. 5,22187 Milne, Cairo Mus. 1,22186 Milne, Cairo Mus. 8,9299
Eg. — Tanis (San) — 238 bc — OGIS 1.56A; Prose 91
βασιλεύοντος Πτολεμαίου τοῦ Πτολεμαίου καὶ Ἀρσινόης, θεῶν Ἀδελφῶν ἔτους ἐνάτου, ἐφ´ ἱερέως {²⁷ἐπὶ ἱερέως B}²⁷ Ἀπολλωνίδου τοῦ
Μοσχίωνος Ἀλεξάνδρου καὶ θεῶν Ἀδελφῶν καὶ θεῶν Εὐεργετῶν, κανηφόρου Ἀρσινόης Φιλαδέλφου Μενεκρατείας
τῆς Φιλάμμονος μηνὸς Ἀπελλαίου ἑβδόμηι, Αἰγυπτίων δὲ Τυβὶ ἑπτακαιδεκάτηι· ψήφισμα· οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς
καὶ προφῆται καὶ οἱ εἰς τὸ ἄδυτον εἰσπορεύομενοι πρὸς τὸν στολισμὸν τῶν θεῶν καὶ πτεροφόραι καὶ ἱερογραμματεῖς καὶ
While king being Ptolemaios son of Ptolemaios, and queen being Arsinoe, fraternal Gods, during their ninth royal year, and kanephoros (basket carrier in the festival) of Arsinoe Philadelphos being Menekrateia daughter of Philammon, in the month of Apellaios the seventh, and in the Aegyptian calendar Tybi the seventeenth, the decree is passed: The archpriests (chief priests)and prophets and the ones allowed to enter the adyton to decorate the the Gods and the wing carriers and the hierogrammateis (the holy scribes)...

More tellingly, a complete list of the months of the Macedonian calendar is seen written on an inscription from Gerasa, and the Arabian Decapolis, in Arabia, in 6AD:
Regions : Greater Syria and the East : Arabia
Gerasa 295 Gerasa 294 Gerasa 296
Syria, S./Arabia-Decapolis — Gerasa (Jerash) — 6th ac
{²Month names in separate panels:}²
1
[Αὐδνα]ῖ[ος].
[Περίτιος].
Δύσ̣[τρος].
[Ξαν]θικός.
5
Ἀρτε̣[μί]σιος.
Δαίσ[ιος].
[Πάνημος].
Λῷο|ς.
Γορπ[ι]α̣ῖος.
10
[Ὑπερ]β[ετε]τε̑ος.
Δῖ|ος.
[Ἀπελλαῖος].

1
Audnaios
Peritios
Dystros
Xanthikos
5
Artemisios
Daisios
Panemos
Loos
Gorpiaios
10
Hyperberetaios
Dios
Apellaios

It is documents like these that declare the Hellenism of the ancient Macedonians, at least as much as the Greek language that the Macedonians propagated to the far reaches of their empire. It is not enough for someone to simply take on the name of the Macedonians, as the psudo-makedonists have done, and automatically achieve a connection to the ancient Macedonians. A boy that dresses in girl's clothes and puts on a lipstick is still a boy. It takes more than that. Nations are not built on Nazi notions of Blut und Boden/Blood and Soil.
No blood and no soil united the people who came as immigrants to the United states, from diverse lands speaking diverse languages, yet a new nation was formed, the American nation. The Greeks who live in Macedonia today can still read the inscriptions from Iran or Egypt, as written above and they can translate and comprehend them without even as much as the use of an ancient Greek dictionary, while the Slavomacedonians are speechless in front of these inscriptions. For good reason: a Greek visiting Skopje or Belgrade, Kiev or Moscow cannot understand the Slavic inscriptions there either. But to their credit, Greeks never claimed to be Slavs either. It is the other way around with some of the Slavomacedonians, who claim to be [pseudo-]Macedonians, therefore Greeks. Then they reach levels of self ridicule trying to prove that the ancient Macedonians of the 4th century BC were essentially Slavic speaking and not Greek.
You can write the names of these months months in Cyrillic, but still, Иперверетајос, Диос, Aпeллеjос mean nothing to the average person in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: they are dead letters to anyone with no Greek language training or knowledge.

We know the names of most months for many Greek city states. November, for example in Athens was Maimakterion/Μαιμακτηρίων. The same month in Macedonia has a very different name: Apellaios/Απελλαίος. We need to remember here what Herodotus tells us about the Dorians...that they were initially part of the Macedonian tribes, before they split from them and descended to southern Greece:

2] ἱστορέων δὲ εὕρισκε Λακεδαιμονίους καὶ Ἀθηναίους προέχοντας τοὺς μὲν τοῦ Δωρικοῦ γένεος τοὺς δὲ τοῦ Ἰωνικοῦ. 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. [3 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.
Ηροδοτου Ιστοριαι A' 56.2
[2] He found by inquiry that the chief peoples were the Lacedaemonians among those of Doric, and the Athenians among those of Ionic stock. These races, Ionian and Dorian, were the foremost in ancient time, the first a Pelasgian and the second a Hellenic people. The Pelasgian race has never yet left its home; the Hellenic has wandered often and far. [3] For in the days of king Deucalion it inhabited the land of Phthia, then the country called Histiaean, under Ossa and Olympus, in the time of Dorus son of Hellen; driven from this Histiaean country by the Cadmeans, it settled about Pindus in the territory called Macedonian; from there again it migrated to Dryopia, and at last came from Dryopia into the Peloponnese, where it took the name of Dorian.
Herodotus, Book I, 56.2) Translated in English by: A.D.Godley.

It is obvious that mythologically there is a strong thread connecting the Macedonians, the Epirotans and the Dorians of the Peloponnese far in the south. Let us remind ourselves that what we now call mythology of the Greeks was to them their religion. It was the sacred tales of their Theogony and Ethnogony, the holy books that described their primeval world and their ancestral descent. It was stories told and retold from generation to generation, tales poetically recited, epics of heroes and acts of the progenitors, that were later written down for posterity and for teaching the younger generations. Herodotus, whose stories -from details about Egyptian Mummification techniques to stories about the Thracians, Persians and Skythians- have been proven to be correct from the archaeological record and through linguistics and other fields time and again. Dismissing his stories as some kind of ancient paid propaganda (as some professors have claimed in recent years, judging possibly "εκ των ιδιων τα αλλοτρια"/"others by their own standards") should never be done without running the risk of being proven wrong, once again, and Herodotus (as always) right!

It was shown by Herodotus that the sacred mythology of the Greeks connects the Dorians of the Peloponnese and the Macedonians. Let us for a moment remember November's name in Attic Greek: Maimakterion/Μαιμακτηρίων. But the Macedonians who were using the dialect of the Athenians, Attic Greek, as language of written documentation in their state, had steadfastly held on to their religious and other traditions, the calender being a major part among them. The calendar is closely knit with the religious fabric of the city: all religious, civic and agricultural aspects of their society was regulated by their calendar. The calendar, therefore was not something they would readily exchange or alter. It was simply too complicated to do that. So we know that the calendar of a state was always conservative and old. In fact the Macedonian calendar not only survived in Macedonia but was in fact exported to all the places where Macedonians ruled in the Hellenistic age, from Egypt to India. In point of fact, it out survived the Macedonian dialect itself.

Let us see how November was called in Boeotia, where Thebes was the major city: Alalcomenios/Ἀλαλκομένιος. In Rhodes, it was called Sminthios/Σμίνθιος. Among the Cretans November was called Eiman/Ειμάν.

The Epeirotans/Ηπειρωται, on the other hand, who spoke the same Northwestern Greek dialect as the Macedonians, called November not surprisingly: Apellaios/Απελλαίος. We move to the sacred oracle of Delphi/Δελφοί, in Central Greece, in Phocis/Φωκίς, far removed from Macedonia but close to Thebes and Athens, yet by the Delphians November was called Apellaios too. In Doric Lacedaemon/Λακεδαίμων whose principal city was Sparta / Σπαρτα, in the south of the Peloponnese, the Dorian Spartans also called their November Apellaios.

If we take the boat from the southern tip of Peloponnese and sail towards Crete we will find first Kythera and then the smaller island of Antikythera. The Antikythera mechanism, is an ancient Greek computing device that was found by sponge divers in an ancient ship wreck by the Antikythera island, in 1901. It is a marvel of ancient Greek technology, created out of bronze between 150 and 100 BC. It is now exhibited at the National Archeological Museum of Athens.

A group of scientists has recently announced that this mechanism was not just another computer but specifically a computer of the night skies, a planetarium in a box, a mechanical calendar used to precisely calculate, among other things, the different Olympic and other athletic sacred games and holidays of the Greeks.
http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/system/files/Athens_2006_Conference_Booklet.pdf

The assumption was always that the mechanism was probably made in Rhodes, which was a center for this kind of mechanical devices in antiquity, but lately we hear of something else: that the Antikythera mechanism was most probably not made in Rhodes, as previously hypothesized, but in Taormina/Ταυρομενιον, a Greek colony of Syracuse/Συρακουσαι in Sicily. How can we know? Because they were able to read the inscriptions on the bronze rings, and the names of the months were corresponding to the last to the months used by Taormina and Syracuse of Sicily, both of which were Corinthian (therefore Dorian) colonies, and they all used the same calendar...just proving once again the conservative power of calendar based tradition!

We read the months, in the Corinthian alphabet as they are written on the Antikythera mechanism: ΦΟΙΝΙΚΑΙΟΣ, ΚΡΑΝΕΙΟΣ, ΛΑΝΟΤΡΟΠΙΟΣ, ΜΑΧΑΝΕΥΣ, ΔΩΔΕΚΑΤΕΥΣ, ΕΥΚΛΕΙΟΣ, ΑΡΤΕΜΙΣΙΟΣ, ΨΥΔΡΕΥΣ, ΓΑΜΕΙΔΙΟΣ, ΑΓΡΙΑΝΙΟΣ, ΠΑΝΑΜΟΣ, ΑΠΕΛΛΑΙΟΣ:


http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/2008/12/olympiad_dial.jpg
(reconstructed)


http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/74EC8DA0-D062-CF7A-4CA2D42F5E5580E9_1.jpg (reconstructed)

It is very interesting to note the name of the last month of this calendar, November as it was called by the Dorian Corinthians of the Peloponnese and the Sicilian Greeks of Syracuse and Taorminia: ΑΠΕΛΛΑΙΟΣ/APELLAIOS! Anyone that can read capital Greek letters can clearly read it in the photograph of the reconstructed mechanism at the website shown above.

Is there a meaning to the name? All Greek names have a meaning. Nothing is arbitrary in the Greek language. It is very logical. Pelas/Πελας is the near one, the neighbor, the one close by. There is a related verb called Pelazo/Πελαζω and its shorter form Pelao/Πελαω which means to be close to others to associate with others. Homoios homoio aei pelazei/Ομοιος ομοιω αει πελαζει, the ancient Greek expression still used in Modern Greek reminds us: "Simillar people associate with their each other". Apellazo/Ἀπελλάζω in Laconic Dorian meant exactly what Ekklesiazo/εκκλησιάζω meant in Attic Athenian: to get together, the gathering of the people the ΛΑΟΣ/LAOS, in order to make a decision. In more Archaic times, in Homer or earlier, Laos/Leos meant specifically the armed men, the people under arms,
οίον δ' αστέρα ήκε Κρόνου πάϊς αγκυλομήτεω
ή ναύτησι τέρας ηέ στρατώ ευρέϊ λαών
λαμπρόν: τού δέ τε πολλοί από σπινθήρες ίενται:
she shot through the sky as some brilliant meteor which the son of scheming Saturn has sent as a sign to mariners or to some great army,
and a fiery train of light follows in its wake
Homer, Iliad, IV,75-77
Apellazein, therefore, originally meant the gathering of the army, and Apella/Απελλα in ancient Sparta retained this ancient Doric meaning and so was called the meeting of the soldier citizens of Lacedaemon. Apella is the Doric and Macedonian equivalent to the Attic and Ionian Ekklesia: the gathering of the people. (Liddel & Scott Greek English Lexicon).

But Apelles has also a very obvious second meaning: the one of God Apollo/Apóllōn /Ἀπόλλων who was also called Apellōn/Ἀπέλλων. (as above L&S)

Some offered an alternate etymology by hypothesizing that Apollo's name could be associated with the Greek verb apollymi/απόλλυμι="to destroy". None other than Plato believed that Apollo's name was derived from ἀπόλυσις= to redeem, ἀπόλουσις = "purification", or ἁπλοῦν "simple", (the Thessalian form of Apollo's name, was Aploun/Ἄπλουν), or possibly from Ἀει-βάλλων "ever-shooting".

The Byzantine lexicographer Hesychios/Ησυχειος comes closest to the truth by connecting Apollo's name with the Doric Αpella/Ἀπέλλα = the "assembly", so that Apollo becomes the God of political life, of the assembly of the army, of the tribe and later of the city. Apollo is also the God of flocks and protector of herdsmen. Apollon seems to have been a very old deity, common to both the Greeks and the Anatolians (the Hittites knew him as Aplu, and to the Trojans as Appaliunas or Apalunas, and Homer mentions Apollon as being the God-protector of Troy-the city of Illion).



Apollon is also known as Nomios/Νόμιος, from Nomos/Νόμος which means the land allocated to the nome/νομή / pastoral distribution of animals. He is also called Karneios/Καρνείος, from Karnos/Κάρνος, Epimelios/Επιμήλιος and Poimniow / Ποίμνιος all meaning the herder of animals. Apella/Ἀπέλλα as it becomes apparent, did not only mean a gathering of people, but it also indicated a gathering of animals. Apellon / Apollon, therefore, was originally the God protector of pastoral life and the shepherds. In Odyssey we see him as Helios the sun God, who kept a herd of sacred cattle.

Apollo's association with music and the "Music" arts of the Muses is very revealing: music, dance history and poetry readings, were essentially communal artistic expressions practiced at communal gatherings, the Apellai/Ἀπελλαι.

The Indo-European root word from which the Greek word apella/απέλλα is derived is: pe'lh1us (pelhh1- fill) which also creates: *pleh1dhwe'h1s that indicates: (the mass of) people. The Greek word Plethos / Πληθος (= the mass of people, the croud) and the Latin word Plebes / Plebeians being the "many", the "multitude", as contrasted to the "few" Patricians are both derived from it.

The following names are a few of the many Greek names that are derived from Apella/Apellon/Apollon:

Apellas/Ἀπελλᾶς, Apellikon/Ἀπελλικῶν, Apelliketis/Ἀπελλικετης, Apellaios/Ἀπελλαίος, Αpollodemos/Ἀπολλόδημος, Apollodotos/Ἀπολλόδοτος, Apollodora/Ἀπολλοδώρα, Apollodoros, Ἀπολλόδωρος, Apollocrates/Ἀπολλοκράτης, Apollophanes/Ἀπολλοφάνης, Apollonia/Ἀπολλωνία, Apollonides/Ἀπολλωνίδης, Apollonios/Ἀπολλώνιος, Apollonis/Ἀπολλωνίς, and of course the name of the famous Greek painter from Ionia, the official portrait painter of Alexander the Great: APELLES/ΑΠΕΛΛΗΣ.

Balkan Tensions & the Future of NATO

Speech by Ted Galen Carpenter, PhD, The CATO Institute.

The CATO Institute analyst, Ted Carpenter, artfully articulates a geostrategic view on the Balkans and proposes an American foreign policy for the area that is drastically and qualitatively different from the dominant, Bush-era, view that sought NATO enlargement from Ukraine and Georgia to FYROM, Kosovo and Bosnia.
This speech was given on May 29, 2010, in Chicago, and it was part of the panel presentation at the 64th Pammacedonian Convention.







Balkan Tensions and the Future of NATO

By: Ted Galen Carpenter



A key assumption long held by proponents of NATO enlargement is that the process would both strengthen the alliance and stabilize potentially volatile portions of Europe. That assumption is dubious in general and wildly inaccurate when it comes to the Balkans. Indeed, the addition of new members such as Croatia and Albania has produced the opposite outcome with respect to both goals. Washington’s ongoing effort to add such countries as Bosnia- Herzegovina and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) would likely make matters even worse. Yet that is the course that U.S. and European leaders seem determined to pursue.



New Balkan Members Weaken, Not Strengthen, NATO

It is mystery why NATO supporters cling to the notion that adding small, militarily insignificant allies makes the alliance stronger and more capable. It is an even greater mystery why opinion leaders in the U.S. foreign policy community believe that such allies benefit the security and well being of America. The opposite is true. Such NATO members are strategic liabilities, not assets, and many of them bring with them political, diplomatic, and military baggage that could prove very troublesome for the United States.

The addition of Croatia and Albania confirms that NATO enlargement has now entered the realm of farce. The military capabilities of those two countries are minuscule. According to the most recent edition of The Military Balance, published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Croatia’s annual military budget is a mere $875 million, and its military force consists of 18,600 active-duty personnel. Albania’s budget is an even more meager $254 million, and its active duty force is a paltry 14,295 soldiers.[1]

By not yet offering membership to FYROM, though, NATO will have to do without Skopje’s $167 million and 8,000 troops. The alliance is also missing the opportunity to add Bosnia’s $281 million in military spending and 11,099 soldiers. And, of course, there is always the prospect of gaining Montenegro’s $61 million and 3,127 troops. Serbia remains enough of a pariah to the statesmen of NATO’s leading powers that its $1.06 billion in spending and 29,125 soldiers probably will be unavailable to the alliance for many years to come.[2]

The combined annual defense outlays of all of those countries are less than the United States spends in Afghanistan in one week. Why American political leaders believe that such military pygmies augment the vast power of the United States is inexplicable.



Potential Trouble for NATO–and the United States–in the Balkans

NATO’s new and prospective Balkan members are not just militarily insignificant, they create the prospect of entangling the alliance–and its leader, the United States–in a variety of messy problems. Albania is likely to prove to be an embarrassment, or worse, for its NATO partners. The country is notorious for being under the influence of organized crime. Indeed, the Albanian mafia is legendary throughout southeastern Europe, controlling the bulk of gambling, prostitution, and drug trafficking.

Moreover, Albania’s political stability remains highly uncertain, as the country is barely a decade removed from the political chaos and near civil war that led to an armed multilateral peacekeeping intervention, Operation Alba, led by Greece and Italy. Longstanding animosity between the two principal ethno-linguistic factions, the Gegs, who dominate the northern part of the country, and the Tosks, who dominate the southern portion, shows no clear signs of abating. It is important to remember that those ethnic tensions contributed to the disorder in the late 1990s, and they could easily do so again.

Problems associated with some of the countries proposed for alliance membership are even more worrisome. Bosnia in the nearly 15 years since the Dayton Accords has hardly been an unalloyed success story for ambitious Western nation builders. Although the Dayton agreement did end the tripartite civil war, Bosnia is still a country that lacks a meaningful sense of nationhood or even the basic political cohesion to be an effective state. The reality is that if secession were allowed, the overwhelming majority of Bosnian Serbs would vote to detach their self-governing region (the Republika Srpska) from Bosnia and either form an independent country or merge with Serbia. And that sentiment has intensified since the United States and its allies gave their blessing to Kosovo’s secession and unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia. Most Bosnian Croats would also likely choose to secede and join with Croatia. Bosnian Muslims constitute the only faction that wishes to maintain Bosnia-Herzegovina in its current incarnation. Although the situation remains relatively stable at the moment, that could easily change.[3] And if it did, NATO would be caught up in the new turmoil.

There are even more troubling aspects if the alliance were foolish enough to add FYROM to its roster of members.[4] FYROM has a huge problem with its Albanian minority in the north and west of the country. The Albanian inhabitants there have sought a degree of political autonomy that amounts to independence in everything but name. Indeed, serious questions remain about the proper location of the border between FYROM and predominantly Albanian Kosovo–now a nominally independent country thanks to its unilateral declaration in February 2008, which occurred thanks to the instigation of the United States and the leading powers in the European Union.

An independent Kosovo is already exacerbating problems with several neighboring countries, especially FYROM. There is scant evidence that advocates of a “Greater Albania” have relinquished their territorial ambitions in the Balkans. It was an ominous development that less than a month after Pristina’s declaration of independence, the leading ethnic Albanian party in FYROM threatened to withdraw its support and bring down the government because of what party leaders described as a failure to support minority rights or to recognize Kosovo’s independence. Among that party’s demands were greater use of the Albanian language and flag in the increasingly autonomous northwestern region of FYROM and increased benefits to veterans of the 2000-2001 Albanian guerrilla insurgency.[5]

The situation has not noticeably improved over the past two years. Indeed, there was an especially alarming incident in early May 2010. Four individuals were killed in shootout with FYROM police near the northwest border hamlet of Radusa. They were driving a van transporting illegal arms from Kosovo.[6] Unless we assume that the FYROM police are exceptionally competent at their interdiction efforts, it is highly probable that there have been other shipments and that this is part of an ongoing campaign to foment a new insurgency.

If FYROM ever becomes a member of NATO, that nasty ethnic separatist problem becomes a matter of direct concern to the alliance. One would think that the United States has enough foreign policy headaches around the world without adding that one to the list.

Fortunately, it is doubtful whether FYROM will gain membership soon. Its ongoing quarrel with Greece remains a major impediment. The primary reason that FYROM was not invited to join NATO when Albania and Croatia received invitations was because Athens continued to object to that country using the name “Macedonia,” which Greeks rightly insist applies only to a region of their nation.

That controversy is not merely over a historical and linguistic point. Greeks worry the Skopje government’s insistence on calling its country Macedonia implies a territorial claim to Greek Macedonia. Maps circulating in FYROM that include major chunks of Greek territory as part of a “Greater Macedonia” do nothing to allay such fears. In early 2008, FYROM’s prime minister was photographed laying a wreath at a monument that featured a map of Greater Macedonia, which even included Greece’s second largest city, Thessaloniki.[7]

Such provocative territorial claims are hardly consistent with the view of FYROM that the U.S. State Department has tried to promote. The nature of Washington’s continuing lobbying campaign for NATO membership for FYROM can be seen in a gushing article about the country in the April 2010 issue of State Magazine, the department monthly publication. The cover described FYROM as the “pearl of the Balkans.” The title of the article itself was “Skopje: Ancient Macedonia Builds Modern Democracy.”[8] The American Hellenic Institute issued a scathing 5-page letter rebuking the State Department for publishing such a puff piece, and the letter effectively debunked several of the article’s claims.[9]


Conclusion

NATO expansion into the Balkans is a spectacularly bad idea, for it entangles the alliance in an assortment of murky disputes and potential dangers. Most of those issues are of little relevance even to NATO’s other European members, much less to the United States. The alliance has not been strengthened by the process of enlargement; to the contrary it has acquired new strategic liabilities rather than assets.

The new Balkan members are militarily useless, and they all bring with them a variety of unpleasant problems. Enlargement has been an especially bad deal for the United States. As NATO’s leader, America is responsible for implementing the alliance’s goal of maintaining stability throughout its membership zone in Europe–and in even in security arenas beyond the continent. Given the history and current condition of the Balkans, U.S. policymakers have now made all the quarrels and problems of that volatile region America’s problems. That is an extremely unwise strategy.


Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of eight books and more than 400 articles on international affairs. His most recent book is Smart Power: Toward a Prudent Foreign Policy for America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). He is a contributing editor to the National Interest and serves on the editorial boards of Mediterranean Quarterly and the Journal of Strategic Studies.



Notes:

[1]. International Institute of Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 2010 (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 119, 123.

[2]. Ibid., pp. 179, 186, 189, 190.

[3]. See Patrice C. McMahon and Jon Western, “The Death of Dayton: How to Stop Bosnia From Falling Apart,” Foreign Affairs 88, no.5 (September-October 2009): 69-83.

[4]. For a good overview of the costs and potential problems (substantial) and prospective benefits (meager) of admitting FYROM to NATO, see Scott N. Siegel, “Weighing Macedonia’s Entry into NATO,” Mediterranean Quarterly 21, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 45-60.

[5]. Kole Casule and Matt Robinson, “Albanian Party Threatens to Bring Down Macedonian Government,” Reuters, March 12, 2008.

[6]. Jasmina Mironski, “Four Dead in Macedonia-Kosovo Border Shooting,” Agence France Presse, May 12, 2010.

[7]. Dora Bakoyannis, “All In a Name,” Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2008.

[8]. Stephanie Rowlands, “Skopje: Ancient Macedonia Builds Modern Democracy,” State, April 2010, pp. 22-25.

[9]. Aleco Haralambides, President, and Nick Larigakis, Executive Director, American Hellenic Institute letter to Hillary Rodham Clinton, April 27, 2010.