What is the etymology of the word Kutleš?

[викторслава]

The star of Kutleš, we all know it, but does anybody know where the name Kutleš came from?

[Soldier of Macedon]

Originally Posted by викторслава

The star of Kutleš, we all know it, but does anybody know where the name Kutleš came from?

It is named after a village in southern Macedonia, first recorded during the Ottoman period. If it comes from the Turkish word kütle it may have meant a group of people in a settlement or something along those lines. And that symbol has been found elsewhere in Macedonia, dated to the ancient Macedonian period. Whoever coined the phrase "star/sun of kutleš" spawned a generation of ignorance. It's the Macedonian sun.

[викторслава]

why was it named after this village?

[Liberator of Makedonija]

Originally Posted by викторслава

why was it named after this village?

Because when the Greeks unconvered the symbol for the first time in ~1977 (date uncertain) they dug it up near the village of Kutleš, which the Greeks have since renamed to Vergina. The Greeks began referring to the symbol therefore as the "Star of Vergina", which some Macedonians responded to by calling it the "Star/Sun of Kutleš".

[Karposh]

Originally Posted by викторслава

why was it named after this village?

I think it was just a deliberate way of deconstructing the implied sense of Greek ownership or some kind of copyright privilege Greeks felt they had for the Macedonian sun symbol by terming it "The Vergina Star". I'm not sure what the ethnicity of the original inhabitants of Kutlesh were (I'm guessing Turkish) but, in the minds of most Macedonians, referring to the Macedonian sun as the "Kutlesh Sun" was a way of letting people know that there was another name for the village of "Vergina" not too long ago and that it wasn't always Greek. It only became Greek recently when the Greeks acquired Macedonia and changed the name of Kutlesh to Vergina as recently as 1922 along with hundreds of other Macedonian geographic place names (such as villages, towns, rivers, mountains, etc.).

I have to admit, I used to be guilty of referring to the Macedonian sun as the "Kutlesh Sun" too but, SoM is absolutely right, this is not wise at all as it confines the cultural heritage of this symbol to this town only while, at the same time, leaving it open for Greeks to claim ownership of it because they discovered it on "Greek land" (albeit stolen land). The Macedonian sun can be found, as has been proven on this site, decorating churches (from frescoes, to icons to church pillars) throughout geographic Macedonia, the Balkans and even Russia.