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Comment by Svip | Hacker News Reader

So can Luxembourg claim the Belgian province of Luxembourg back then?

Greece didn't claim the country for itself, it claimed the name for it's own northern province.

Greece's logic in disapproving of the name Macedonia is that they fear that Macedonia (the republic) could some day claim the Greek province of Macedonia. By that logic, so should Luxembourg (the grand duchy) be able to claim the Belgian province of the same name.

There's a difference though, in that the province of Luxembourg was indeed a part of Luxembourg (the country) not even 200 years ago. So it would be a much more legitimate claim.

I don't think the rich Grand Duchy would be terribly interested in acquiring the empoverished Belgian province.

A more appropriate parallel is the US state of California, which is named as it was once a part of a region named after Alta California, the name California first being applied to the then-thought-to-be-an-island peninsula in modern Mexico.

The country of Macedonia was part of a region generally called Macedonia for over a thousand years, as the initial named unit of Macedonia (which was in Greece) expanded to cover a wider area.

Bad logic because Greece's borders are internationally recognized. Nobody legalised Russia annexing the Crimea. You cannot just claim territory unless you're a superpower.

Besides I think the people in Greece-Macedonia are happy being Greek.

That is not an official stance.

Macedonia is part of the Greek identity. FYROM (still the official name until the agreement gets implemented in a few months) have been claiming this Greek identity by misappropriating history.

Think of it as a trademark violation.

Greece didn't claim anything. Macedonia has been a Greek region for thousands of years. The so-called 'macdonia' state and the whole naming dispute emerged out of nowhere after WWII.

Macedonia is a broader geographic region which is shared by 4 states.

Second Balkan war? :)

The conflict is about name, not area. Macedonia wants into EU, Greece doesn't agree as long as Macedonia is called Macedonia.

The conflict became about name after the aggressive irredentist rhetoric coming from newly-formed Makedonia in the 1990s. Remember that Greece had a civil war and Yugoslavia supported the communists in Northern Greece, so the subject is tricky.

Makedonia

I wonder - is this spelling some sort of shibboleth for Greeks who want to make a point that 'Macedonia' is only the area in Greece? I've seen it a few times in this thread, but never before anywhere else (then again, I didn't even know this was an issue until a week ago).

It is simply a different transliteration. Neither country uses the Roman alphabet, it's either Македонија or Μακεδονίας.

Nitpicking: it's "Μακεδονία" (without "ς") in nominative.

Probably a more accurate transliteration, since the 'c' gets pronounced as soft in English (at least, every time I've heard it: "Mass-ə-doh-nee-ah"), whereas the kappa indicates it should be a hard 'c'.

Or another example is China's Inner Mongolia province which borders the country Mongolia. This whole name thing is so stupid. Why can't they both just have the same name?

I'd also like to petition to return New Mexico to Mexico.

New Mexico was actually named before Mexico. It was only under uncontested Mexican control for about 13 years, between the 1824 invasion and the beginning of the Chimayó Rebellion in 1837.

Sure, how many divisions does Luxembourg, the country, have?

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