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

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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'.

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