It’s been a while since I’ve had to make one of these posts, so I couldn’t quite think of another trivial dispute off the top of my head. However, I somehow missed this one in my previous place names video, despite it being one of the biggest place name disputes out there.
The ancient kingdom of Macedonia (or Macedon), famous as the original domain of Alexander the Great, was located mostly in Greece and had mostly Greek-speaking inhabitants. Macedonia continued to be regarded as a region into the Roman Empire, though Slavic tribes would settle in the region during the middle of the 1st millenium. As the strength of the Slavs in the Balkans (where Macedonia is located) increased, parts of traditional Macedonia began to fall into Slavic control.
In the Middle Ages, Slavic nations such as the First Bulgarian Empire and the Serbian Empire eventually managed to conquer the northern regions of Macedonia from the Byzantine Empire. When the Ottoman empire conquered Macedonia in the 14th century, Macedonia ceased to be defined as its own region, but Greek and Slavic populations remained in the area.
However, the Ottoman empire started to collapse in the 19th century, and new Slavic nations such as Serbia and later Bulgaria were created in the Balkans. Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece all believed they deserved to govern some of the lands within the historical region of Macedonia. Despite the Macedonian Slavs mostly speaking a language more similar to Bulgarian than Serbian, the decision to give the country most of the land in Macedonia was scrapped due to concerns about the country becoming too powerful. Once the land was taken from the Ottomans in 1913, it was decided to give most of the north part of the country to Serbia (which became part of Yugoslavia after WWI ended), with the southern portions going to Greece.
Many Slavic speakers remained in the Greek portions of Macedonia, which often faced cultural stigmatization from the Greeks. Yugoslavia also tried to regard the Macedonians as Serbs rather than as their own national identity, a policy which led to resistance from terror groups such as the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, which assassinated King Alexander I of Yugoslavia.
During WWII Bulgaria would occupy much of Eastern Greece, including parts of Macedonia, a brutal process which only served to further inflame divisions between the Greeks and their Slavic neighbors. Bulgaria also occupied much of Yugoslav Macedonia during the war. However, Yugoslavia, under its new Communist Marshal Josip Broz Tito, successfully reclaimed Macedonia. While Tito was initially optimistic about a union between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, his split with Stalin’s communist bloc led him to call for a repudiation of any claims to Bulgarian heritage within Macedonia, thus cementing Macedonians as their own ethnic group. The civil war in Greece between the monarchists and the communists made Greece suspicious of the Macedonian nationalist cause, as many Slavic Macedonians in Greece supported the Communists and wished to unite with Yugoslavia.
The issue of Macedonia’s name reached its modern level of relevance once Macedonia became an independent country during the breakup of Yugoslavia, a period which was marred by bloody ethnic conflict. While Macedonia was spared the worst of these conflicts, it did raise concern among Greeks that Greek sovereignty over their part of Macedonia was threatened, along with worries that the name of Macedonia would no longer be attached to Greece.
On their part, the Macedonians did do many things which could reasonably be seen as appropriating the Greek history of Macedon. For one, their flag features the Vergina Sun, the symbol of the ancient kingdom of Macedon. (While still in use on the flag, the form of the symbol was changed to appease Greek concerns in 1995.) A monument to Alexander the Great was also added to Macedonia’s capital, despite the fact that he spent most of his formative years in modern-day Greece.
Greece did agree to recognize Macedonia, but only if it was referred to as the “former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia” (FYROM). However, Greece still refused to call the country Macedonia without qualifiers, even refusing to let Macedonia join NATO and the EU because of it. Talks between the two countries to reach a compromise went on for more than a decade, until Macedonia agreed to change its name to the “Republic of North Macedonia” in 2018. Hopefully, this compromise will prevent the naming dispute from returning.