Yasou fellow Christian Orthodox Brothers,
At the very least, putting aside the name issues surrounding country, people, orthodox church etc., consider each other as Christian orthodox brothers. No one can deny this.
My background is traced to a beautiful Island that gave birth to Lesbians, called Lesbos. I grew up in a small town in South Australia and in my very early childhood, I grew up with a beautiful neighbor, a Macedonian family. They would come to our Greek service in an Anglican church. There was no orthodox churches. We didn’t know there was a Macedonian issue. Well my parents certainly didn’t. I later learnt from my mum that they were Macedonian from Yugoslavia (when it was still around). The point I want to make, taking away the backgrounds, we still had a common bond, and that was the Orthodox faith.
Now that I am older and wiser, my personal belief and its my opinion only, that there are definitely two strands of the Macedonian issue that BOTH sides need to acknowledge and accept. We can at least agree that there two sides to this matter and no one should have a monopoly over it.
I can only go by what the historians/scholars have published and there is no doubt that there is a connection with Macedonia with ancient Hellenic world. People have since come and gone, moved on, displaced, adopted languages, customs and religions and we are what we are today. The Greeks need to get around their mindset and accept that there is a community that speaks a different language and identifies with the region of Macedonian. I continuously read that Greece only recently changed the name of their northern province in the late eighties to Macedonia. I really do not know the background to this, but if just pull out like I did last night, the World Encyclopedia (circa 1980), it clearly shows under Greece the Macedonian region. These topics simply spit hairs.
One of my personal gripes is the term we use to call my mother country Greece and being called Greeks. It pisses me off that the English world can not accept that its real name is Ellada (Hellas) and we are Ellines (Hellenic) and I would love to see these names used commonly. Where am I going with this. Good question. If we can agree that BOTH sets of communities exist, we can try to find a common ground that does not compromising who we are.
So my layman suggestion is that today’s community who are from and affiliated with the Republic of Macedonia, to not change its name but to simply change how the English world pronounces the republic in your language:
- Makedonska Republika,
- Makedontsi for your people,
- Makedonski for your language
- refer to Greece as the Hellenic Republic and its northern province as Makedonia
This would at least retain the status quo through our own pronunciations and differentiate our two communities.
Take care
At the very least, putting aside the name issues surrounding country, people, orthodox church etc., consider each other as Christian orthodox brothers. No one can deny this.
My background is traced to a beautiful Island that gave birth to Lesbians, called Lesbos. I grew up in a small town in South Australia and in my very early childhood, I grew up with a beautiful neighbor, a Macedonian family. They would come to our Greek service in an Anglican church. There was no orthodox churches. We didn’t know there was a Macedonian issue. Well my parents certainly didn’t. I later learnt from my mum that they were Macedonian from Yugoslavia (when it was still around). The point I want to make, taking away the backgrounds, we still had a common bond, and that was the Orthodox faith.
Now that I am older and wiser, my personal belief and its my opinion only, that there are definitely two strands of the Macedonian issue that BOTH sides need to acknowledge and accept. We can at least agree that there two sides to this matter and no one should have a monopoly over it.
I can only go by what the historians/scholars have published and there is no doubt that there is a connection with Macedonia with ancient Hellenic world. People have since come and gone, moved on, displaced, adopted languages, customs and religions and we are what we are today. The Greeks need to get around their mindset and accept that there is a community that speaks a different language and identifies with the region of Macedonian. I continuously read that Greece only recently changed the name of their northern province in the late eighties to Macedonia. I really do not know the background to this, but if just pull out like I did last night, the World Encyclopedia (circa 1980), it clearly shows under Greece the Macedonian region. These topics simply spit hairs.
One of my personal gripes is the term we use to call my mother country Greece and being called Greeks. It pisses me off that the English world can not accept that its real name is Ellada (Hellas) and we are Ellines (Hellenic) and I would love to see these names used commonly. Where am I going with this. Good question. If we can agree that BOTH sets of communities exist, we can try to find a common ground that does not compromising who we are.
So my layman suggestion is that today’s community who are from and affiliated with the Republic of Macedonia, to not change its name but to simply change how the English world pronounces the republic in your language:
- Makedonska Republika,
- Makedontsi for your people,
- Makedonski for your language
- refer to Greece as the Hellenic Republic and its northern province as Makedonia
This would at least retain the status quo through our own pronunciations and differentiate our two communities.
Take care
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