Marcus Stoinis - Greek or Macedonian?

[Karposh]

Besides playing some backyard cricket with the neighbourhood kids back in the 80's, my knowledge and interest in the game of cricket remains pretty limited. Nevertheless, my interest picked up recently with the name Marcus Stoinis being tossed around on the news of late. He's apparently a very good cricket talent that everyone in the know is talking about. He's killing it in the domestic league as well as in the T20 competition.

As most Macedonians will note, the name Stoinis sounds very Macedonian, albeit a Hellenised version of the original, Stojanov. Naturally, I had to check so I googled him. Wikipedia says he is of Greek decent but somehow I'm not convinced. And I'm not the only one. Apparently there has been a bit of an edit war going on with regard to his ethnic heritage which has prompted one editor, "Blue Square Thing", to state the following:

"Following a number of back and forth edits, primarily from a number of IP addresses and culminating in this edit (see the edit summary for implicit legal threats), I've removed any mention of Stoinis' ethnic heritage and religion from the article. I couldn't give a toss about the implicit legal threat, but there is clearly a BLP issue here. The source that was being used twice says he is of Greek origin, but that dates from 2015 so who knows - there have been a number of political changes in that part of the world and I can't be arsed to dig any further - I'm sure it'll turn out that his heritage is from the bit of Greece that's called Macedonia, but that's just going to get silly and if people are going to get stressed about being described as something then it's probably just best to leave it out. He's Australian, with all that that means. There was no mention in the source of his religion so that bit - which wasn't being removed by IPs at all - needs to go anyway."

I have linked the edit in question below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marcus_Stoinis&diff=prev&oldid=904029439

[Amphipolis]

Stoinis is indeed a rare version of the most common surname Stogiannis. According to a helpful Greek website there is only one family with the name Stoinis in Greece and they are in Florina.

As for Marcus Stoinis many sources call him Greek, e.g.,

He flew directly home from Brisbane on Thursday and plans on marking tomorrow with a traditional Christmas with his “big Greek family” that he jokes vegans won’t approve of.

“There’s every bit of meat you can get and then heaps of Greek desserts. This is the time you need to be with family and it’s a good time of year. It’s perfect how it’s worked out.”

These are pictures of him, father, mother and sister.

[Karposh]

Hey, look who's back! Yeah, I saw that quote too but I wouldn't read in to it too much. The famous Aussie Rules Football player, Peter Daicos, once played for the All Greek Victorian team many years ago and Greeks were quick to come out and say "see, we told you he was Greek". But, as is common knowledge now, Peter Daicos is very much proud of his Macedonian heritage (i.e. not in a Greek context). The Wikipedia Edit page that I linked mentions something about Stoinis' parents taking exception to the media for labeling them Greeks. Not sure if that quote was sourced or not but the guy (Marcus Stoinis) probably doesn't care too much either way and probably just considers himself an Australian only. The natural assimilation process in this country eventually takes a hold and the next generation of kids simply don't care about their parents' past and just want to be Australians and nothing else.

[Statitsa]

Stoyan or Stojan (Bulgarian: Стоян, Macedonian: Стојан) is a South Slavic name derived from the verb Stoya (Стоя, to stand).[1] The variant Stoian also appears in Romanian[2], and in northern Greece as Stogiannis (Greek: Στογιάννης).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoyan

[Soldier of Macedon]

As for Marcus Stoinis many sources call him Greek....

Whatever this individual identifies as today, there's no doubt his surname comes from a Macedonian ancestor who was forced to accept a new prefix to make him appear "Greek" and facilitate the assimilation policy of the racist government that occupied southern Macedonia in the early 20th century.