Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Macedonia)/2019 RFC

Due to the Prespa agreement, the Republic of Macedonia has been renamed to the Republic of North Macedonia. In June 2018, the Arbitration Committee authorised an RFC to change the naming conventions for Macedonia. Now that the name change has occurred, we should consider what the changes should be. 18:31, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

This discussion will end on 17 March 2019.

Contributors are reminded to base their opinions on the principles of naming conventions, disambiguation, the neutral point of view policy and the reliable sources guideline.

Specific policies related to the RfC are WP:NAMECHANGES, WP:COMMONNAME and WP:OFFICIALNAME

Once the discussion period is over, consensus will be reviewed by a panel of three uninvolved contributors.

There are 7 areas of discussion:

1. Disambiguation
2. Nationality of people
3. State-associated and other public entities
4. Adjective
5. Historical names
6. Non-contentious housekeeping
7. Other proposals

Disambiguation

"What should be the entry for "Republic of Macedonia"/"North Macedonia"?"

• Option A: It should be "North Macedonia, formerly the Republic of Macedonia, a country of southeastern Europe"
• Option B: It should be "Republic of Macedonia, now Republic of North Macedonia, a country of southeastern Europe"

Additionally, the following four entries are in the first section of the Macedonia disambiguation page (Macedonia most commonly refers to):

Macedonia (ancient kingdom)	North Macedonia/Republic of Macedonia
Macedonia (region)	Macedonia (Greece)

What should the order of these items be?

Please list the order of each item following your choice of Option A/B as:
#1 foo1, #2 foo2, #3 foo3, #4 foo4.

Survey (disambiguation)

• Neutral on exact wording; Outside scope of this RfC for the ordering question. This RfC shouldn't attempt to micro-manage particular details on individual pages, but concentrate on general things we need an actual guideline for. (But if we have to micro-manage: it should continue to be ordered according to prominence of reader interest, which is well documented, and that means country > ancient kingdom > Greek region > wider region.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:46, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Neutral on exact wording as per Future Perfect at Sunrise' comment. Ordering: Outside scope of this RfC. But since we are micro-managing as per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC):

1. North Macedonia, previously the Republic of Macedonia, a country of southeastern Europe
2. Macedonia (ancient kingdom) or Macedon, a kingdom in Greek antiquity.
3. Macedonia (Greece), a traditional geographic region spanning three administrative divisions of northern Greece
4. Macedonia (region), a geographic and historical region which today is part of six Balkan countries (see map)

--FlavrSavr (talk) 18:57, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A with the following order:

1. Macedonia (region), a geographic and historical region which today is part of six Balkan countries (see map)
2. North Macedonia, previously the Republic of Macedonia, a country of southeastern Europe
3. Macedonia (Greece), a traditional geographic region spanning three administrative divisions of northern Greece
4. Macedonia (ancient kingdom) or Macedon, a kingdom in Greek antiquity.

This follows the same format as Korea (disambiguation) and Ireland (disambiguation), where we first get a mention of the region, followed by the modern political entities, followed by historical entities. --Michail (blah) 19:04, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• Neutral as to the wording but the country should be first (country > ancient > Greek region > wider region) per same rationale as FlavrSavr. --Local hero ^talk 19:22, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A with the following order:

1. Macedonia (region), a geographic and historical region which today is part of six Balkan countries (see map)
2. North Macedonia, previously the Republic of Macedonia, a country of southeastern Europe
3. Macedonia (Greece), a traditional geographic region spanning three administrative divisions of northern Greece
4. Macedonia (ancient kingdom) or Macedon, a kingdom in Greek antiquity.

This follows the same format as Korea (disambiguation) and Ireland (disambiguation), where we first get a mention of the region, followed by the modern political entities, followed by historical entities. --Despotak (talk) 19:33, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A with the following order:

1. Macedonia (region), a geographic and historical region which today is part of six Balkan countries (see map)
2. North Macedonia, previously the Republic of Macedonia, a country of southeastern Europe
3. Macedonia (Greece), a traditional geographic region spanning three administrative divisions of northern Greece
4. Macedonia (ancient kingdom) or Macedon, a kingdom in Greek antiquity.

This follows the same format as Korea (disambiguation) and Ireland (disambiguation), where we first get a mention of the region, followed by the modern political entities, followed by historical entities. --Antondimak (talk) 19:59, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A with the following order:

1. Macedonia (ancient kingdom) or Macedon, a kingdom in Greek antiquity.
2. Macedonia (region), a geographic and historical region which today is part of six Balkan countries (see map)
3. Macedonia (Greece), a traditional geographic region spanning three administrative divisions of northern Greece
4. North Macedonia, previously the Republic of Macedonia, a country of southeastern Europe StevenHal (talk) 20:07, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A with the following order:

1. Macedonia (region), a geographic and historical region which today is part of six Balkan countries (see map)
2. North Macedonia, previously the Republic of Macedonia, a country of southeastern Europe
3. Macedonia (Greece), a traditional geographic region spanning three administrative divisions of northern Greece
4. Macedonia (ancient kingdom) or Macedon, a kingdom in Greek antiquity. — Tom^(T2ME) 20:10, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A and sorted per Michail, Despotak, Antondimak and Tom I initially voted "Option A and sorted per Google hits" but after reading the arguments in the discussion bellow, I changed my opinion and now I believe, that, this disambiguation shall follow the same rationale as other politically sensitive disambiguations such as the Korea Disambiguation. I can't see why this one here should be different from the others. --✿ SilentResident ✿ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 21:03, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• Neutral on the wording, since I consider it a minor issue. I don't have a strong opinion for the order either, but since question was included I would go for 1. Macedonia (region), 2. North Macedonia, 3. Macedonia (Greece), 4. Macedonia (ancient kingdom), per Michail and Despotak's rationale.--Argean (talk) 21:19, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A with the following order:

1. Macedonia (ancient kingdom) or Macedon, a kingdom in Greek antiquity. (Explanation: The article start with the word Macedonia and it's the oldest)
2. Macedonia (Greece), a traditional geographic region spanning three administrative divisions of northern Greece
3. Macedonia (region), a geographic and historical region which today is part of six Balkan countries (see map)
4. North Macedonia, a country of southeastern Europe

The North Macedonian government has agreed not to use "Macedonia" and use "North Macedonia". Since it the country is now called North Macedonia, people and media will increasingly start using North Macedonia and no longer confuse the it for another entity. Macedonia will become a historical and geographical term. Macedonia (ancient kingdom) should go first followed by Macedonia (Greece) since it encompasses most the area of the ancient kingdom. Dash9Z (talk) 21:49, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A with the following order:

1. Macedonia (region), a geographic and historical region which today is part of six Balkan countries (see map)
2. Macedonia (Greece), a traditional geographic region spanning three administrative divisions of northern Greece
3. North Macedonia, a country of southeastern Europe, formerly known as Republic of Macedonia
4. Macedonia (ancient kingdom) or Macedon, a kingdom in Greek antiquity.

Following the same format as Ireland (disambiguation) and Sudan (disambiguation), where the region (which is the most general definition and includes and explains the others) comes first, then the larger of the two modern political entities which has the same name as the region, then the smaller political entity, then historical entities. Kkyriakop (talk) 22:22, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A --StanProg (talk) 22:36, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A with the following order:

1. Macedonia (ancient kingdom) or Macedon, a kingdom in Greek antiquity.
2. Macedonia (region), a geographic and historical region which today is part of six Balkan countries (see map)
3. Macedonia (Greece), a traditional geographic region spanning three administrative divisions of northern Greece
4. North Macedonia, previously the Republic of Macedonia, a country of southeastern Europe

I absolutely agree with the explanation given by Sashko1999 Peace in balkans (talk) 23:41, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A with the following order:

1. Macedonia (region), a geographic and historical region which today is part of six Balkan countries (see map)
2. Macedonia (ancient kingdom) or Macedon, a kingdom in Greek antiquity.
3. Macedonia (Greece), a traditional geographic region spanning three administrative divisions of northern Greece
4. North Macedonia, previously the Republic of Macedonia, a country of southeastern Europe

I know this order may not be popular, but my reasoning is that, under consideration of all the options playing out in my head, "(region)" is the most relevant now. Thus, this goes at the top, no matter what. But what to do with the rest? "Macedonia (Greece)" and "North Macedonia" are equivalent in my mind (they both describe current political administrations, so these should be alphabetical. "(ancient kingdom)" could thus go before or after these two, but I prefer it before because it keeps the list 'mostly' alphabetical. This means my second choice (given the likely unpopularity of the first one) would be the reverse alphabetical of this; #1 Macedonia (region), #2 North Macedonia, #3 Macedonia (Greece), #4 Macedonia (ancient kingdom). This just so happens to correspond with the earlier entries by Michail, Despotak, Antondimak, and Argean for unrelated reasons. - Wiz9999 (talk) 02:25, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option B: ’’’A’’’ is incorrect. It should be ‘’’Macedonia’’’, officially the ‘’’Republic of North Macedonia’’’. For now, Macedonia is its common name. That may change some day. Frenchmalawi (talk) 04:12, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A. As for the order, we should take into account that readers may not be sure which article they are looking for. Such readers are best served by listing the articles in order of likelihood to be what readers searching for Macedonia are looking for. Per today, that means the following order:

1. North Macedonia
2. Macedonia (ancient kingdom)
3. Macedonia (Greece)
4. Macedonia (region)

Libhye (talk) 07:16, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A, normally we do not use "Republic of" or "Kingdom of" in front of country names, except in cases of deliberate disambiguation, which is not applicable here. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:41, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A with the following order:

1. North Macedonia, previously the Republic of Macedonia, a country of southeastern Europe
2. Macedonia (ancient kingdom) or Macedon, a kingdom in Greek antiquity.
3. Macedonia (Greece), a traditional geographic region spanning three administrative divisions of northern Greece
4. Macedonia (region), a geographic and historical region which today is part of six Balkan countries (see map)

This is the logic sequence now in my view. It may change as people adjust to the new nomenclature, but not in the short term. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:17, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A with the following order:

1. Macedonia (region)
2. North Macedonia
3. Macedonia (Greece)
4. Macedonia (ancient kingdom)

This order gives the region as a whole - which I think is probably the most obvious thing that "Macedonia" alone might mean - then the modern political entities starting with the sovereign state, then the historical entity.

I would, however, not incorporate the order into MOSMAC and allow the order to be changed by talk page consensus in the normal way. Kahastok talk 10:08, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A with the following order:

1. Macedonia (ancient kingdom) or Macedon, a kingdom in Greek antiquity.
2. Macedonia (region), a geographic and historical region which today is part of six Balkan countries (see map)
3. Macedonia (Greece), a traditional geographic region spanning three administrative divisions of northern Greece
4. North Macedonia, previously the Republic of Macedonia, a country of southeastern Europe Xaris333 (talk) 10:34, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A. The ordering is outside the scope of this RfC. Thryduulf (talk) 12:24, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A in main article. Imagine that Wikipedia got started in 1991 rather than 2001. Would we have said "Zaire, now Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a country in central Africa" in 1998? No, we would have switched things over and provided the old name later in the first sentence. Also see Burkina Faso, which doesn't even mention "Upper Volta" until the fifth sentence. As far as the disambiguation page, use this order:

1. Macedonia (ancient kingdom)
2. Macedonia (Greece)
3. Macedonia (region)
4. Republic of Macedonia, now known as North Macedonia

Just treat it as a matter of alphabetical order, or even frame the last one as "Macedonia (republic)" to make the alphabetical focus more obvious. Nyttend (talk) 16:14, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A with the following order:

1. Macedonia (region)
2. Macedonia (Greece)
3. Macedonia (ancient kingdom), a kingdom in Greek antiquity.
4. North Macedonia, a country of southeastern Europe, formerly known as Republic of Macedonia

The reasoning for the order is that North Macedonia is not 'Macedonia' anymore while the three other entities are. Of course, we keep it in the list because it was know as such until very recently.--APG1984 (talk) 06:08, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A for the moment in the following order (although I got no hard feelings about it

1. Macedonia (ancient kingdom) or Macedon, a kingdom in Greek antiquity.
2. Macedonia (region), a geographic and historical region which today is part of six Balkan countries (see map)
3. Macedonia (Greece), a traditional geographic region spanning three administrative divisions of northern Greece
4. North Macedonia, previously the Republic of Macedonia, a country of southeastern Europe

--Azeryion (talk) 08:31, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Discussion (disambiguation)

• I agree with Michail and Despotak about the order. It is the same as we do with other disabiguation articles regarding wider regions. Fut.Perf. and FlavrSavr have pointed out that this disambiguation page differed from others because in this case user interest was obviously tilted toward the country. I will counter this by saying that when the country was named "Macedonia", it's natural for readers to search for "Macedonia" when looking for the country article. Howerver, now that the name has changed and there is a geographic identifier, the country no longer monopolises the name. Thus the situation becomes a lot more like the "Korea" disabmiguation page. --Antondimak (talk) 20:08, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Maybe it's too late, but I would like to make a small suggestion. Could we modify it from "North Macedonia, previously the Republic of Macedonia" to "North Macedonia, previously partially recognised as the Republic of Macedonia", maybe with an additional link similar to (see: Macedonia naming dispute)? --Antondimak (talk) 11:49, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

That, to me, would seem to give undue weight to the position that anything ever named “Macedonia” could only ever be Greek (or Greek-ish, but certainly not Slavic.) Like it or not, a sovereign country calling itself Republic of Macedonia existed. That Greece insisted on (and many countries and international organizations accepted) a “former Yugoslav” clarifying prefix for official communications does not negate the existence of the country. —ThorstenNY (talk) 16:41, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Of course it existed, but it was known under both names. We don't want to be partisan against Greece, we accept that Kosovo is partially recognised. We shoudl accept that North Macedonia's name was partially recognised. --Antondimak (talk) 20:40, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

• I really don’t care about the order (or the phrasing), but I can see how this might lead to edit wars (if it hasn’t already.) But I don’t see any easily explainable objective standard based on human judgement calls about the importance of the different entities. Would a purely technical solution be feasible? E.g., is it possible to retrieve the frequency of links clicked on the dab page and strictly order the entries by that? —ThorstenNY (talk) 16:49, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Nationality of people

What should people from North Macedonia be called? The selected term shall be used as a short form instead of the official term "Macedonian/citizen of North Macedonia", when nationality is required by the Wikipedia manual of style (such as in lead paragraphs of person biographies), and is irrespective of people's ethnicity.

• Option A: The people from North Macedonia should be called "North Macedonian(s)".
• Option B: The people from North Macedonia should be called "Macedonian(s)".

Survey (nationality)

• Option B, as per the emergent practice of reliable external sources, which follow the stipulations of the Prespa agreement, and also per the principle of conservative Wikipedia usage (don't force a change unless there's clear evidence that usage outside Wikipedia has also changed). There's also no disambiguation issue (since there's no other state on earth that would have a "South", "East", "West" or whatever other "Macedonian" nationality, so a sentence of the form "XYZ is a Macedonian football player" remains just as unproblematic as it was before. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:10, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B in this format: the nationality, for for private individuals, should be 'Macedonian'. However the term should not link to North Macedonia, but either Macedonians (ethnic group) or, if the article is created, People of North Macedonia (to include ethnic Albanians of North Macedonia). Under this proposal, the correct use of nationality would be Macedonian ([[Macedonians (ethnic group)|Macedonian]]); but not Macedonian ([[North Macedonia|Macedonian]]) --Michail (blah) 19:12, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B. The Prespa Agreement states that the nationality remains Macedonian (or citizen of North Macedonia), but never North Macedonian. — Tom^(T2ME) 20:09, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A, as it is the only one that is unambiguous. Common use isn’t everything, as we can see with Republic of Ireland. That’s not the most commonly used term for the sovereign state, but it is the most unambiguous. —ThorstenNY (talk) 20:13, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B as per WP:OFFICIALNAMES, WP:COMMONNAME, WP:NAMECHANGES & WP:CRYSTAL. Prespa Agreement clearly establishes it as an official name, first by specifically defining the nationality as Macedonian/citizen of North Macedonia (article 1.3.b) and then by explaining the usage of Macedonian when denoting the people of North Macedonia (article 7.3). The official position of the government of North Macedonia is that its citizens should continue to be called "Macedonians," not "North Macedonians.". It is extremely unlikely that 'North Macedonian' will ever be used as an WP:OFFICIALNAMES in any international organization. The UN defines the inhabitants also as Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia. Since nationality is closely linked to sensitive issues such as identity and self-determination, the usage of North Macedonian(s), is likely to spur major controversies, especially when used in biographies of living persons. European Union officials have been known to publicly apologize for the usage of North(ern) Macedonian to refer to the people. It has been also the most common name and still is because there are virtually few or no reliable sources using 'North Macedonian' referring to the people. --FlavrSavr (talk) 20:25, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Neither A, nor B separately, while both are acceptable, depending on the context. Jingiby (talk) 20:32, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A As a solution to avoid the lengthy, though necessary use of the term "Macedonian/Citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia", exactly as neweurope.eu states ("New Europe will describe the country's citizens as North Macedonians hoping to avoid the term "Macedonian/Citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia"). "Macedonian" cannot be used alone to describe nationality anymore (in terms of citizenship, not ethnicity) and will cause further confusions with the ethnic group in English usage (since the geographic compound of the name). "North Macedonian(s)" stems from the country's new name and covers all citizens of North Macedonia regardless of ethnicity (including Albanians, Turks, etc. which make up a great percentage of the country's population, the reason the country is officially bilingual). Regardless of the Agreement, Wikipedia focuses on common usage, something that "North Macedonian(s)" is eventually coming to and has already been used to describe the citizens (e.g. deutschland.de article "Based on the Franco-German model").StevenHal (talk) 20:37, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B. It doesn't seem to be a mistake that "North Macedonian" is excluded from the Prespa agreement. It gives us "Macedonian/Citizen of North Macedonia" for nationality. From this, it seems reasonable to deduce that "Macedonian" is acceptable terminology. Regardless of this agreement, however, "Macedonian" is now (and for the foreseeable future) the most common usage. If there is any ambiguity, which should be very limited since there is no other Macedonian nationality, "North" can be added. --Local hero ^talk 20:42, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A as per StevenHal. --Despotak (talk) 20:53, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A as per StevenHal. If however we see in the future that common usage goes heavily in the other way we should revert it, but I worry that the current system we are working with doesn't allow for such corrections, so I will consider changing my vote. --Antondimak (talk) 21:18, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B For the time being, I am convinced that the agreement was meant to give the nationality "Macedonian", as a simplification of the longer name. Furthermore, that the leadership of the Albanian community wanted it to be referred as "Macedonian". Trusting the people who worked to reach this agreement, knowing the possible consequences, I think we should abide by their decisions, as most English publications have. --Antondimak (talk) 11:21, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B is the only reasonable option at the moment. The context that the term is used in wikipedia has not changed (e.g. nationality in biographies per WP:MOSBIO), no need for disambiguation has occured, and the alternative has no validity, neither as WP:OFFICIALNAME, nor as WP:COMMONNAME currently. Additionally, I can't see how can any secondary sources could challenge the issue for now, since the issue of self-identification has never been contested by the officials, and MOS:IDENTITY sets priority to the term that person or group uses for themselves. --Argean (talk) 21:38, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A. because option B is very confusing if used to describe Albanians, Turks and other North Macedonian people who are not ethnic Macedonians. --✿ SilentResident ✿ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 21:55, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A It is the simplest way of referring to something/someone from North Macedonia without causing confusion. Dash9Z (talk) 22:08, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A Some people think that there exist two options for the citizenship, i.e., it is either "Macedonian" or "citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia". However, the citizenship is "Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia", according to (a) the Prespa agreement, (b) the modified constitution of North Macedonia, and (c) all official travel documents. If the citizenship were "Macedonian", then there would be no reason to put "Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia" in all these aforementioned documents, because it's obvious that the citizens of the Republic of North Macedonia are citizens of the Republic of North Macedonia. The fact that the citizenship is neither "Macedonian" nor "North Macedonian" is a result of a compromise between the two countries, North Macedonia and Greece. We have to respect that two countries made an agreement after 27 years. We should not try to introduce more problems. It's clear that people in both countries do not agree with this compromise, the vast majority is not happy, but it is a step towards peace in Balkans. If people all over the world used the official term FYROM to refer to North Macedonia the last 27 years, maybe, it wouldn't be necessary for North Macedonia to change its constitutional name. The reason for this change is that Greece was not convinced that a solution with two names (Macedonia for internal use and North Macedonia for international use) would work because of what happened with FYROM. Please take seriously this issue and respect people on both countries. Otherwise, any abuse of the term "Macedonian" may result in more problems between the two countries in the near future. People in North Macedonia need a name that identifies them, which means uniquely. The name "Macedonian" does not identify them, because there are people with different identities that are called Macedonians. This is not my personal opinion. This is the opinion of people in both countries, North Macedonia and Greece, and this is the reason for the name dispute for almost 30 years. It's up to us if we want to have peace in Balkans. Moreover, the name "Macedonian" does not identify Albanians in North Macedonia. Albanians wanted to remove completely the term Macedonia from the citizenship, and this is the reason for the additional clarification in the constitution. Last but not least, the argument that wikipedia uses common names and not official names is vague, for the simple reason that if wikipedia uses the incorrect term "Macedonian" then the majority of the world will use it because of wikipedia. In my opinion, wikipedia has to be a reliable source, and not a source of propaganda. There is no reason to believe that the people of North Macedonia will be called just Macedonians unless wikipedia and other sources with significant influence spread wrong information. The goal of wikipedia is to be neutral and objective, not biased. The use of the term "Macedonia" is inappropriate for Wikipedia.Peace in balkans (talk) 22:26, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A As a short form for the citizens of North Macedonia and because it's unambiguous as well. --StanProg (talk) 22:43, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A, because:

1) North Macedonian is simpler, clearer and less confusing as it is consistent with the name of the country. Particularly if the adjective used to describe the country is 'North Macedonian', having the nationality be different will lead to all sorts of awkwardly inconsistent constructions like North Macedonian government but Macedonian government officials, North Macedonian film but Macedonian filmmakers, North Macedonian population but population of Macedonians etc., violating WP:PLAINENGLISH and WP:REMEMBER.

2) WP:REMEMBER mandates the principle of least astonishment. Most people would expect a person from North Macedonia to be called a North Macedonian.

3) North Macedonian is completely unambiguous while Macedonian will be highly ambiguous in many use cases, as it could also mean the ethnicity or the regional identity. Since many North Macedonians are not Macedonians and many Macedonians are not North Macedonians, making the distinction will make everything clearer.

4) Since the official nationality is "Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia" and, for Albanian citizens, may be listed as "citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia" , 'North Macedonian' and 'Macedonian' are both equally formally inaccurate, so it makes sense to use the former one which is simpler.

5) Option A is consistent with the example of North Korea, where the official nationality is Korean, but Wikipedia uses North Korean, which is clearer and less ambiguous. --Kkyriakop (talk) 22:57, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option B - as its in line with the Prespa agreement, continues the current practice on Wikipedia to describe Albanians, Turks and other people from the country who are its citizens and its not WP:CRYSTAL like option A.Resnjari (talk) 23:11, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A: Akin to the concerns raised by SilentResident, I think nationality (citizenship, etc.) should contain the "North". I imagine in my mind two Albanians, or two Swedes (pick any identity really and it still applies), the first one living in North Macedonia, the second living in Macedonia in Greece, and both saying they are "Macedonian" Albanians, or "Macedonian" Swedes. This is both technically correct (because of the regional stuff), but at the same time completely unhelpful as a descriptive/distinguishing label. The one living in North Macedonia simply using the "North Macedonian" label resolves this, which is not incorrect, as he LIVES there, i.e. 'belongs' there or 'belongs' to the state. Making the ownership term by the actual state name sensible -"North Macedonian", (this has no bearing on normal North Macedonian individuals who are claiming a purely "Macedonian ethnicity" label, naturally.) So, from a citizenship perspective, "North Macedonian" seems justifiable. As most people living in North Macedonia are "Macedonian" ethnic peoples with a 'belonging' to the state "North Macedonia", thus making them "North Macedonian" citizens (belonging term). I know this is kind of counter to Prespa, but Prespa is all about what is WP:OFFICIAL, we deal with WP:COMMONNAME here on Wikipedia, and since it is early in the historical development of this "North Macedonia" terminology change, it is hard to say which of the two will be WP:COMMONNAME. I would argue that they BOTH are to be considered as such, as either COULD ultimately be WP:COMMONNAME, and it is not our place to predict this. Yet, one must be chosen over the other, and the reason I mentioned earlier seems sensible enough distinction to me. - Wiz9999 (talk) 02:25, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B...the other option is clearly incorrect and offensive. Frenchmalawi (talk) 04:15, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B. We should do that which is least likely to result in years of endless complaints about Wikipedia's practices, and that is to align ourselves as closely as possible with the provisions of the Prespa agreement. – The agreement doesn't even mention the term North Macedonian, and the term Macedonian is expressly allowed in reference to the people of North Macedonia. Libhye (talk) 06:07, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A, for consistency with the country name and since option B is ambiguous. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:49, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A, for consistency with the country name. --Sharouser (talk) 08:38, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A. I think we're guessing whatever we choose here, as we've had to move so quickly that I don't think that the WP:COMMONNAME given WP:NAMECHANGES has had time to bed down yet. So we should remain open to revising this in the future. But I see North Macedonia in the same bracket as South Korea or East Timor, where the ethnicity is Macedonian, Korean or Timorese, but general people from the country are North Macedonian, South Korean or East Timorese.

The contrivance "Macedonian/citizen of North Macedonia" from the Prespa Agreement - assuming that's intended to be a single term including the slash - should never be used except when explicitly discussing official terminology. Kahastok talk 10:31, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option A, for consistency with the country name. Xaris333 (talk) 10:36, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B per the agreement and usage in reliable sources per others. Thryduulf (talk) 12:26, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C "People from North Macedonia" to avoid the tyranny and divisiveness of demonyms and go for precision. Laurel Lodged (talk) 13:22, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A purely for reasons of consistency and to avoid confusion Weatherextremes (talk) 13:56, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A. "Macedonians" can include people from the parts of the region that aren't part of North Macedonia, and it excludes people living in North Macedonia who are Albanians, Arabs, etc. Nyttend (talk) 16:10, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B per Prespa agreement. It's simple, and a survey cannot change the agreement. Wikipedia should not try to invent, but document. sliceofcodes (talk) 16:19, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A because Macedonian/s refers to the ethnic Macedonians and if is used and for the all citizens of North Macedonia will be very confusing for the readers. Make an article on North Macedonians that will include all ethnic groups who live in North Macedonia (Macedonians, Albanians, Turks, Romani, Serbs, Bosniaks, Aromanians, Bulgarians etc.)--APG1984 (talk) 06:11, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A B could refer to all of Macedonia. – BrandonXLF (t@lk) 07:36, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B per Prespa agreement, plus, it is what RS are moslty using as far as I can understand. Cinadon36 (talk) 08:11, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A for consistency with the country name. Any other choice will result in endless policing and discussions as editors will use North Macedonian in good faith anyway. --Azeryion (talk) 08:33, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B there's no any other national Macedonian identity. National identity should have more rights than regional identities. MacedońskaKrewetka (talk) 11:56, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Discussion (nationality)

• About User:Philly boy92 (Michail's) proposal of using "Macedonian" but linking it to the ethnicity rather than to the country page: I'm afraid that suggestion is self-defeating really, because an ethnicity simply isn't a nationality. And our biography guidelines are crystal-clear on the matter that we should routinely describe people in their bios by their nationality first, not by their ethnicity. There's no reason not to link that description to the country, just as we do with every other country on earth. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:20, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

'Macedonian' linking to North Macedonia is an adjectival reference, and should be done in the "of North Macedonia"/"North Macedonian" manner in line with how it's done in other cases, ex. North Korean. --Michail (blah) 19:27, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

It seems this discussion further demonstrates how confusing it is to have Macedonian be the adjective of North Macedonia. Right now nobody is sure how this will shake out, so I favor clarity over ambiguity. If (!!!) RS clearly gravitate towards Macedonian over the coming weeks, we’ll know and I’ll change my vote. —ThorstenNY (talk) 21:10, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

I do get your point Michail and it's valid, so I would suggest as an alternative to leave the term unlinked when not necessary, e.g. we don't have to link both "x is a Macedonian football player, ... playing for the North Macedonian National team". This requires further discussion, I agree. --Argean (talk) 21:46, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

I’m afraid such constructs would cause quite a bit of confusion, as it suggests — to anyone without prior special knowledge that “Macedonian” is supposed to be the adjective for “North Macedonia” — that being “Macedonian” is something that is somehow special, different or particularly noteworthy for a player of a North Macedonian national team. —ThorstenNY (talk) 01:13, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Is not much different as a construct from "a Northern Irish athlete representing Ireland" which is something that I'm sure that I've heard before. I'm aware that I might becoming a bit annoying of trying to separate the name of the people from the name of the country (I'm so frustrated that they didn't go for an untranslated version like Moldova vs Moldavia, or Republika Srpska vs Serbia), but I can't see how people speaking the Macedonian language, and self-identifying as Macedonians, will incorporate an adjectival attribute before their name that will apply depending on context (ethnically Macedonian + nationally North Macedonian?), without creating confusion on who are the Macedonians after all... --Argean (talk) 01:35, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

That right there Argean is why I crystal-ball-predict that, ultimately, the people of North Macedonia will come to accept the "North Macedonian" label, and come to terms with the loss of the individually "Macedonian" one. It may take 100 years for this change to happen, but I think that the complex way of having to describe themselves like this will eventually compel this shift. I could be wrong of course, I'm not saying I'm right, it is just the way I perceive it. - Wiz9999 (talk) 02:46, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

I wouldn't be so daring in my predictions Wiz9999 for the same reasons I don't see Turkish Cypriots being called Northern Cypriots any time soon. Ethnic identity in regions like Balkans and the Middle East is very sensitive issue and the whole stability of such regions is based on the balance of self-identification and perserving the feeling of distinction among others. "North Macedonians" as a concept of national identity wouldn't be much more viable than the Bosnians one in the long term --Argean (talk) 02:59, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

I always dare to predict ;) Life is just more interesting that way. You don't have to listen to my ramblings, often they are just mad ramblings. I hesitate to compare this to the Cyprus dispute that is a far more serious point of contention, with the possibility of real conflict occurring in future. Sorry, but the Macedonian naming dispute is just not on the same scale. It was always going to be largely addressed by an agreement between Greece and "North Macedonia". The issue has not nearly built up to the seriousness of Cyprus and is largely just one based on entomology, identity, nationalism, and culture. The TRNC is backed directly by turkey, a NATO country, Cypriots in the south don't enjoy as much luxury as this. Not to mention the other states in the region with an interest in the situation, Greece, Russia, Israel, UK, EU, etc. The Bosnian identity example is more comparable, but still quite different to that of the Macedonia dispute. There is always the potential for Bosnia to self destruct, whereas Greece and "North Macedonia" would be incredibly unlikely to have ever come to actual blows over this. It may not seem this way, but it is just a fact that neither state has ever said anything meaningful to the effect. - Wiz9999 (talk) 04:47, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

And I dare to dream that people will stop having disputes over names or even borders, but at the same moment I'm trying to be realistic and see the whole picture. You've painted well the picture of Cyprus dispute, but on the other hand I think you are missing many points over the Macedonian one. Luckily, it's more than a century ago when Macedonian Question led to 2 Balkan Wars, but don't you think that Balkans have too many irredentist claims for such a small region, and lots of "Greats" Albanias, Bulgarias, Serbias, etc, to be overlooked and disregarded as a potential destabilizing force? --Argean (talk) 11:15, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

On the contrary! I am well aware of the multitude of irredentist claims that much of the Balkan countries have over each other, and many of these are issues stemming back to long prior to WWI, as you exemplified with your mentioning of the Balkan wars. However, the situation in the Balkans at the moment is sort of akin to that of a post WWII east & west Europe as a whole. The yugoslav wars of the 1990s were a devastating conflict for the region, and no-one wants to see any violence flare up again. This is because, as with post WWI europe, any return to war would be so catastrophically destructive that it is just better to use diplomacy, all parties know that any conflict between them would devastate their own homelands and ultimately not be worth the effort (yes I know there are no nukes involved with regards to today's balkans unlike cold war era europe, but the capacity for large scale destruction and ethnic cleansing still remains high). Greece was not directly involved with the 90's conflicts, yes, but they followed those conflicts intensely and the lessons from the wars are not lost on the Greeks as a whole. Thus there is HUGE incentive for nations to cooperate right now, and work towards a peaceful relationship with their neighbors. The ongoing expansions of the EU and NATO are the most obvious manifestations of this trend, so long as radical elements in each state do not rise up to power. - Wiz9999 (talk) 12:31, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

I really wish that Bosnia and Herzegovina was Switzerland in terms of national/ethnic identity and Albania was Austria in terms of willingness to join NATO and abide to their policies. But they are not. Trust me, as a Greek Macedonian that grew up near the borders and as an educated individual, I have a good picture of both the history and the current political issues of the region. But let's not turn this discussion to a political forum, I think we both made our point clear enough. --Argean (talk) 12:51, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• I'm very anxious about this and I would like to make the reasons for this known in case others would want to take them into account. I will actually argue against my current vote. There's a larger and more sensitive issue at play here, and I trust the diplomats' and lawmakers' assessment. Listening to them and to other experts, it's clear that North Macedonia is in an unstable state, and it will likely get worse soon. The country is in a state of polarisation and there is a nascent possibility of violence. There is currently talk about border changes in the area, and it's likely one will take place (between Serbia and Kosovo). In this climate, if there is a perception among many Macedonians belonging to the VMRO side that they have been betrayed, that everything is lost, violence could break out. The deal essentially giving the term "Macedonian" for the nationality was mainly to pacify that part of the population. Wikipedia is a major English language source. Even though it isn't supposed to influence, only reproduce what other do, it does anyway. So it plays a role in establishing common usage, which in turn plays a role in shaping the perception in North Macedonia, and therefore shaping the people's reaction. We can't know the future, but I'm very concerned. --Antondimak (talk) 21:36, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

I completely share your concerns, Antondimak. However, we don’t know how this will shake out. It is also possible that ethnic Albanian citizens of North Macedonia will object to being called Macedonians (now that the country has a different, “non-ethnic” name) and accuse the majority of attempted “Macedonisation.” We just don’t know. We also don’t know how English-language RS will treat the issue: pragmatically or legalistically. My guess is the former, but we just don’t know. In the meantime, it seems pretty obvious which option is less ambiguous. Just imaging constructs such as “a Macedonian (but ethnically Albanian, not Macedonian) athlete” on some North Macedonian team. Huh? —ThorstenNY (talk) 22:00, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

That's the reason I voted for "North Macedonia". About your point about Albanians though, I know that it was the Albanians too that pushed for the nationality to be called "Macedonian", so that they wouldn't be excluded if it were only an ethnic term. --Antondimak (talk) 22:11, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Yes they did. Zaev conceded on that point and is what secured Albanian votes for the name change in parliament. There was nothing about a geographic qualifier of "north" for citizens, nor does the Prespa agreement stipulate one.Resnjari (talk) 23:14, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• The purely grammatical way this RfC is structured right now gives significant undue weight to the term 'North Macedonian(s)', given the fact that at the moment of the start of the RfC, it is used in little or virtually no reliable sources (to refer to the people in question, some media have just begun to use it to refer to the state-associated entities covered by the section below), it's not official and it has never been used as a common name in the past. It is there solely on the assumption that it will be used by the majority of sources which at some point in the future (while being used in few, if any reliable sources at the start of the RfC). Given the legal context of the Prespa Agreement which specifically defines the nationality as Macedonian/citizen of North Macedonia (article 1.3.b) and the adjective Macedonian when denoting the people of North Macedonia (article 7.3) it is unsurprising that the official position of the government of North Macedonia is that its citizens should continue to be called "Macedonians," not "North Macedonians.". It is extremely unlikely that 'North Macedonian' will ever be used as an WP:OFFICIALNAMES in any international organization. The UN defines the inhabitants also as Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia. Since nationality is closely linked to sensitive issues such as identity and self-determination, the usage of North Macedonian(s), is likely to spur major controversies, especially when used in biographies of living persons. European Union officials have been known to publicly apologize for the usage of North(ern) Macedonian to refer to the people. The notion that Wikipedia editors, basing their decisions on personal grammatical preferences or sadly their ethnic background, will even consider prescribing how an entire nationality should be referred when they refuse to be called 'North Macedonian', never were called or agreed to be called like that, and in fact, simply aren't even after the state name change (according to the majority of current reliable sources)- well, this notion, strikes me not only as contrary to basic NPOV policy (Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them) but also as borderline culturally insensitive. For these reasons, and many more - I've even opposed the inclusion of this option in the drafting of this RfC. I've also proposed a modified format including a research of reliable sources before every section - that'd be helpful on determining what's the actual, not the future WP:COMMONNAME should the Wikipedians choose to use it over WP:OFFICIALNAME, for some reason. Sadly, even that has not yet met the consensus - clearly giving way to Wikipedia being a crystal ball. While we're in that territory, The Economist actually speculates it might take years for the state name to take hold, let alone the nationality. --FlavrSavr (talk) 09:56, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• To address Kahastok's point, this in fact isn't like East Timor or South Korea. In this case, we are talking about a region with the same identity, but where there is political division. In this case, there isn't one Macedonian nation. Somebody from North Macedonia and South Macedonia would have completely different identities, the same way as people from Western, Northern and Eastern Thrace. --Antondimak (talk) 10:53, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

This is true. And I'll be quite upfront about the fact that I'm making an vaguely-informed guess that may turn out to be completely wrong. But my expectation is that, for most native English-speakers, the parallels between the situations will be more significant than the differences. Kahastok talk 11:08, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• About New Europe StevenHal Despotak Antondimak - it was the first publication to refer to the people as „North Macedonians“, even before the official announcements, and even suggesting to their journalists. I was not surprised, however, to see their owner and editorial team being almost entirely Greek. However, after that article there is still some caution even in their ranks as this article shows - „It remains to be seen whether journalists covering the region will actually accept and begin to use the adjective “North Macedonian” when writing about events in the country.“. It is not a reliable source. --FlavrSavr (talk) 11:15, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Regardless of that source, I'm not basing my opinion on it, it was an example. I was pretty clear on what I said. "North Macedonian" is the best option for a) Consistency with the country's name b) Avoiding the lengthy and impractical, though necessary term of the Prespa Agreement (which basically renders the usage of "Macedonian" for describing nationality, officially obsolete, in a way it wouldn't create major backlash to North Macedonia's public), c) Accurately describe ALL citizens of North Macedonia (an overwhelmingly multicultural and multiethnic country with Albanian as an official state language) regardless of ethnicity d) Avoiding major confusions and ambiguity that arises both within the very country (nationality-ethnicity), as well as between the regional people of Macedonia (Greece) and North Macedonia, as others have stated. --StevenHal (talk) 12:15, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. I raised concerns over the neutrality and reliability of that source quite early. ([1]) --Argean (talk) 11:20, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• @Wiz9999, SilentResident, StevenHal, and ThorstenNY: (and others). I'm really trying to follow your train of thoughts on the need for disambiguation and I really fail to see the point. The issue is already addressed and we have a bunch of articles over Macedonian Albanians, and when it's necessary to refer to ethnicity/origin (although not required by the MoS) we do so, as here, or here (randomly selected). This is not an exception, because we follow the same style in many other cases, such as footballer Bixente Lizarazu who is ethnically Basque and nationally French, or MMA fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov who is ethnically Avar and nationally Russian. On the contrary using the term "North Macedonian" as an introductory term to someone's bio, will probably create a new ambiguity, and in many instances the need to further specify ethnicity not only for Albanians, but also for ethnic Macedonians. Now imagine introducing a sentence that it would read "x is a North Macedonian of Macedonian descent/origin/ethnicity". Now this is confusing. --Argean (talk) 12:20, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Argean, we've had this lengthy discussion before and ended up nowhere. You seem to be desperately trying to convince us that a North Macedonian citizen (ethnic Albanian) would cause more confusion than a Macedonian citizen (ethnic Albanian) even though a Macedonian (ethnic group) and Macedonian (Greek regional people) exist at the same time! This is greatly problematic, especially now that the name has changed (and reference to the citizens naturally follows a country's name in the English language), and will most likely lead to unprecedented confusion and need of specifications in the future. --StevenHal (talk) 12:44, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

I can't see how you call problematic the logic of making the less possible disruption to an established consensus instead of introducing new terms that seem to me as a desperate effort to fabricate a concept that goes much further of serving the goals of wikipedia. Macedonian Greeks will always be Greeks, and I'm really glad that finally there is an agreement that distinguishes that the identity and history of Macedonian Greeks is completely different to the one of their neighbors to their North, something its' importance many people fail to recognize. --Argean (talk) 13:15, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Considerable, fundamental changes have just been made such as the CHANGING of the country's name (and many other aspects behind it) and constitution, as well as the significant Albanian minority officially gaining a more influential role and presence in the country, yet you speak of disrupting something established and introducing new terms as if nothing has happened these last few months. For reasons other users, and I, have already explained, I strongly insist on what I said, believing it will solve many issues while being accurate at the same time. Finally, you claim you are glad the agreement distinguishes Macedonians (Greeks) from Macedonians of North Macedonia while supporting the (officially invalid) usage of a nationality that does the EXACT OPPOSITE. --StevenHal (talk) 14:00, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

I was never an advocate of revanchism, and will never become one, neither going to take the chance to jump on the train of opportunistic negationism. Trying to deal with all the sides of the dispute that are not being resolved by the agreement, in a way that will make our lives easier inside and outside of wikipedia, is one thing, but failing to recognize the potential benefits of a finally accomplished agreement to systematically eradicate misconceptions over history and identity is a stubborn mindset that I will never abide to. --Argean (talk) 14:34, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

I honestly hope you are not accusing me of these things, because this is clearly not my intent, as I have provided, and continue to do so, clear arguements and reasons for supporting what I claim. I don't see where you are going with this. Disagreeing with me is one thing, accusing me, indirectly, of having a "stubborn mindset" in such a snobbish way is something I wouldn't have expected from you. --StevenHal (talk) 15:01, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

We don't know each other so I don't think that we should have any expectations. I will not follow the blame game that started in this very row of edits and certainly will not play the card of WP:AAGF. --Argean (talk) 15:28, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

It's true we don't know each other but you did cry "personal attacks" on a couple of discussions we had for otherwise trivial and laughable "offenses" I made, so I assumed you wouldn't be so hypocritical as to freely try to insult someone like that, just because he has a different opinion. Maybe it's your way of arguing, who knows. Have a good day. --StevenHal (talk) 16:04, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

@Argean:"North Macedonian of Macedonian descent/origin/ethnicity" That is EXACTLY what the Prespa agreement does though, except with the less controversial "North Macedonia" instead of "North Macedonian". If I just swap the order of how you just said what you said: Now imagine introducing a sentence that it would read "x is a person of Macedonian descent/origin/ethnicity of North Macedonia", this is in full alignment with Prespa. The only thing we are really doing differently is applying the more naturally linguistically modified term (in English) of "North Macedonian" which allows us (again in English sentences) to place the order in the way that you specified. I didn't draft Prespa, but I do think its adherence is confusing. - Wiz9999 (talk) 12:48, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

@Wiz9999: Still, can't follow your example and this is EXACTLY what the Prespa Agreement does NOT do, since it doesn't mention the term North Macedonian not even once. Do we ever need to use sentences like "a Russian from Russia", or "a French(man) from France" for Russians/French that are both ethnically and nationally Russian/French to distinguish them from their compatriots that are not? And to make it even more descriptive, do we have to mention that "x is a Bosnian of Bosniak ethnicity"? Wikipedia MoS requires one term for nationality and we need the one that is more appropriate and does not introduce new problems. --Argean (talk) 13:05, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Why is confusing North Macedonian of Macedonian ethnicity?, for me is isn't at all, there are people from North Macedonia (North Macedonians) who are of Macedonian, Albanian, Turkish etc. ethnicity. Also, in Bosnia there are Bosnians of Bosniak, of Serbian, of Croatian etc. ethnicity. In North Korea there are North Koreans of Korean, of Han Chinese, of Japanese etc. ethnicity. Sashko1999 (talk) 16:13, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

This is precisely why the demonym should not direct to Macedonians (ethnic group) like it does now. We can't say on the one hand that "Macedonians" refers to all people of North Macedonia, including non-ethnic Macedonians, and then direct the reader to a page about 65% of the population of North Macedonia. --Michail (blah) 13:09, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, this thing with the demonyms who linking to the dominant ethnic group of the countries is wrong, I said that before and we opened a discussion here to resolve the problem. Isn't the case just with the demonym Macedonians who link to the ethnic Macedonians, there are many other cases like that, for example the demonym Russian linking to Russians and ethnic Russians in Russia are 81%, the demonym German link to the ethnic Germans and the ethnic Germans in Germany are 80%, etc. etc. Sashko1999 (talk) 16:13, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

This is not a problem of directing the demonym to the right page, but rather changing the demonym to suit the new name. A demonym according to Wikipedia itself, "is a word that identifies residents or natives of a particular place, which is derived from the name of that particular place.". This makes it pretty obvious what the demonym should be, in agreement, also, with the demonyms of other countries, states, cities, regions, etc. bearing directional names. --StevenHal (talk) 14:13, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Well, it's very logical if someone is from North Macedonia to be called North Macedonian, doesn't metter if by ethnicity he/she is Macedonian, Albanian, Turk or whatever.

@Philly boy92: As I said before I'm siding with the argument that this needs to be adressed and indeed an article on "People from North Macedonia" seems a sensible approach. --Argean (talk) 13:18, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

@Argean: Good idea, but such an article wouldn’t really help someone being confused about “Macedonian soccer players from North Macedonia” on a gazillion sports pages. Is not much different as a construct from 'a Northern Irish athlete representing Ireland', you wrote. I’m sorry, but it is fundamentally different from “a Macedonian athlete representing North Macedonia.” The area where Northern Irish people come from is only 1/6 of the size of the area represented by all-Irish sports teams. That this false analogy was mentioned here illustrates “beautifully” the pitfalls of using “Macedonian” (with no further explanation) to describe citizenship of North Macedonia. People are just going to assume “Macedonian” (citizenship) and “North Macedonia” (country) describe different entities, when in fact they don’t (or at least are not supposed to.) With (politician-proposed) language so confusing, I think that WP:REMEMBER should take precedent. —ThorstenNY (talk) 21:05, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

@ThorstenNY: You misunderstood me (or I wasn't clear enough): my comment was not meant to provide an analogy on content, but merely on linguistic constructivism and I didn’t even use it in the way that you rephrased it. Per se a Northern Irish athlete representing Ireland wouldn’t make any more sense to an uniformed individual either, or even more a person from Northern Ireland holding British citizenship, if the logic of WP:REMEMBER was to be applied and such oversimplification was the preferable solution. You say that people will assume that “North Macedonia” and “Macedonians” are 2 unrelated entities, but still you seem to forget the fact that Macedonia and Macedonians are already 2 different entities. Well, I guess that this problem can be easily solved if we remove the factor "Macedonians" from the equation, but I don’t think that we are here to provide people lessons on self-identification so they can fit our expectations on appropriate terminology. And honestly do you really think that a “North Macedonian of Macedonian origin” is an expression that will not confuse the readers, or do we have to explicitly suggest the editors to avoid using ethnic terms? --Argean (talk) 23:20, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

I guess we’re both missing each other’s points, Argean. Yes, I do claim that the wording of “a Northern Irish athlete representing Ireland” is not (really) confusing. The phrase uses two different terms for two different entities. (People not familiar with the existence of all-Ireland teams might be surprised by the circumstances of people from different sovereign states playing on the same “national” team, but the wording is not what gives rise to questions here.) On your second point, on the contrary, I am all-too-aware of the difference between Macedonian ethnicity and (North) Macedonian citizenship. That’s even more reason to use one term for the ethnicity and another term for citizenship. None of the supposedly confusing examples you have given elsewhere seem as confusing to me as “a Macedonian athlete of Macedonian ethnicity playing for North Macedonia.” Others have pointed out that Prespa does not prescribe a short form for citizenship, only a long form, which, however, is completely impractical for most article about people from N.M. So we essentially have to create our own short form. Should we pick one that is intuitive and unambiguous or one that is confusing and ambiguous? —ThorstenNY (talk) 00:29, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

ThorstenNY Well I guess we do, since it seems that we have different understanding of some ideas, but that's fine. Possibly coming from different backgrounds means that we are seeing things from different perspectives and thus failing to follow each others train of thought. I will not go back to the Northern Irish paradigm and your interpretation of it, where honestly you completely lost me, going from the two different entities to the same nation, which is already one of the two entities, and yet being also a sovereign state which is a different entity, but anyway. I will say that I still fail to see your reasoning on what has created in the present case the need to separate the two terms of ethnicity and nationality/citizenship, especially in such a way that one of the terms (North Macedonians) contains the other (Macedonians), without the former group of people being part of the latter, but rather the opposite. You keep raising the issue of being practical, and yet you are still avoiding my most practical question by referring to the content of the problem, but then you go back again to present the issue as a practical problem that we have to deal and create our own short form so yeah I don't think that you are really trying very hard to convince me, are you? --Argean (talk) 01:49, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

• @Sliceofcodes: Please do not spread misinformation. The Prespa Agreement DOES NOT state the nationality is "Macedonian", but rather changes that to "Macedonian/Citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia" (indivisible) which will replace the "Macedonian" on ID's, passports etc. It's obvious this was done as a step to stop the usage of "Macedonian" when referring to nationality, but in a more moderate and neutral manner in order to avoid major conflict and backlash, and not to establish it, as it was already simply "Macedonian" before the Agreement. So not only is the nationality "Macedonian" officially defunct, but will create major confusion and issues if it is used now that the name is "North Macedonia". --StevenHal (talk) 23:27, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• @Argean and Antondimak: The citizenship is neither "Macedonian" nor "North Macedonian". Zaev says that people can still be called Macedonians, and this is true. But the right of self-determination is an individual right. Nobody can enforce all people in North Macedonia to be called Macedonians. Moreover, Zaev told to people to say it, not to write it. The written term is "Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia" as stated in every official document/organization/source. This is confirmed by Nikos Kotzias who said that we cannot control what people say in North Macedonia, but we can control the official name of them. In wikipedia, we need a name that identifies all people of North Macedonia. If a name does not identify the people or does not identify uniquely the people, then it's not an identity. The term Macedonian is not an identity because different people use it, and they all admit that they have different identities. Geographically speaking, everybody who lives in the region of Macedonia is Macedonian, but in this case, we have to explicitly say that we talk about geography. The pure term "Macedonian" is not an identity and causes confusion. First, because there are people in North Macedonia that do not call themselves Macedonians. Second, because there are people in other countries who call themselves Macedonians. Unless we clarify in which sense we use the term Macedonian, we cannot use it to identify people. For example, if we say the Macedonian football player, why should we mean someone from North Macedonia and not someone from Macedonia, Greece? If your answer is that we call Greeks those from Macedonia, Greece, then you already took a side and this is problematic. What makes you believe that all people in North Macedonia want to be called Macedonians and all people in Macedonia, Greece do not want to be called Macedonians and they prefer the term Greeks? In other words, who says that people in Greece have to make a choice? Is there a limit of identities per person? Did you ask all Macedonians from Greece if they want you to call them Greeks and not Macedonians? The right of self-determination applies to the Greek people too, not only to people in North Macedonia. Moreover, Did you ask the Albanians in North Macedonia if they want to be called Macedonians without a clarification of what you mean Macedonians? We have to be objective and respect the identity of all people. If there are conflicts between different identities, we need a way to treat all people equally. Nobody says that Macedonians in Greece must be identified with the term "Macedonian". It's fine if we use the term "Greek Macedonians". But, this doesn't mean that the term "Macedonian" is ready for sale, and someone else can use it without a qualifier. This is also part of the agreement, nobody has exclusive ownership on the terms Macedonia and Macedonians. 40% of people in North Macedonia don't call themselves "ethnic Macedonians". North Macedonia is a country of people with different ethnicities, and nobody feels North Macedonian. The same happens in Cyprus, nobody is Cypriot. In official level, according to the constitution, there exist Greeks and Turks. But we don't call all people of Cyprus, Greeks or Turks. Therefore, North Macedonian is the only neutral name to refer to all citizens of North Macedonia. Otherwise, we take a side. I don't see any reason for negotiations that sacrifice the reliability of wikipedia. Finally, if the criterion for the choice of the name is the name used by people, we should notice two things. First, we don't know if people in North Macedonia want to be called Macedonians. Second, people in Greece call themselves with a name that nobody uses, and I don't see wikipedia using this name either. Everybody calls people from Greece, Greeks except of the Greeks. And the Greeks do not complain, they even introduce themselves as Greeks because it's a widely-used term that avoids confusion. Why people in North Macedonia have to be treated differently? Peace in balkans (talk) 23:33, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

@Peace in balkans: sorry, TL;DR, I didn't read more than the couple sentences in your comment, but reading the first couple of sentences show that you have confused nationality with ethnicity. You wrote: "The citizenship is neither "Macedonian" nor "North Macedonian". Zaev says that people can still be called Macedonians, and this is true. But the right of self-determination is an individual right. Nobody can enforce all people in North Macedonia to be called Macedonians.". But that's incorrect. Self-determination is about ethnicity, not nationality. The Macedonians have every right to be called however they want. None interferes to their ethnic rights. This survey here is about nationality only. Here this discussion is about how to call ALL the people of the country regardless of ethnicity (Macedonians, Albanians, Turks, Romas, Arabs, etc), irrespective of how they want to be called. This is a complicated issue and I am not too much to it, but I voted for North Macedonians which I believe is unabiguous enough and can cover all ethnic groups regardless. --✿ SilentResident ✿ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 00:51, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

@SilentResident: I haven't confused nationality with ethnicity. My intention was to explain to people who talk about ethnicity what is the difference of the two terms in my previous comment. We need a name that refers to all people, e.g., a name like the citiznenship of people. The ethnicity is the individual right of self-determination, 60% of people in North Macedonia can be called Macedonians if they want, and 2.5 Millions in Greece can also be called Macedonians if they want. I can also be called Macedonian, but my passport doesn't say Macedonian. As you can see, we say exactly the same. What is incorrect in my comment? The citizenship is "Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia", so it's neither "Macedonian" nor "North Macedonian" as I said. Zaev says to people that they can be called Macedonians, but it doesn't mean that they are Macedonian citizens. And it certainly doesn't mean that they have to be called Macedonians (e.g., the Albanians). Zaev says nothing more than the obvious thing. He refers to ethnicity and not to the official name of the citizens. In wikipedia we certainly don't discuss about the name used for their ethnicity. I hope now the misunderstanding is gone. One problem is that the title survey is "Nationality" which is a synonymous of the word "ethnicity" in Balkans, and a synonymous of the word "citizenship" in Western Europe. Maybe it makes more sense to change the title from "Nationality" to "Citizenship". Peace in balkans (talk) 09:34, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

@Peace in balkans: Indeed your first post was far TL;DR, so my apologies that I didn't reply. Yes, the differences among ethnicity, nationality and citizenship can be interpreted as very subtle ones depending on the context and this is not helped by linguistic issues either. The term nationality has caused a lot of confusion to Greeks and Albanians, because its' common translation in Greek, and Albanian would translate as ethnicity in English. My understanding so far is that nationality (who as a general term means belonging to a nation as being a member of an organized community, i.e. a country) is used in the sense of meaning only citizenship which equals with the legal bond of a citizen to the state). Kotzias' earlier interviews [2] Officially, the term 'North Macedonia' will be in the title of their institutions, as well. But if you think I can make it so every citizen is called 'North Macedonian', I will ask you the following simple question: There is a resident of Skopje and he tells his girlfriend that he is "Macedonian". What do we do in this case? Will we set up a thought-police state that will put him in prison? What we said is that the citizens of this country have the right to self-determination. and Katrougkalos' recent remarks [[3] The Agreement cannot regulate issues related to a people or to a nation. The reason is simple: States recognise States, not people. Issues of nationality are legal issues that pertain to the relationship of the citizen with the State while, on the contrary, issues of national identity and integration into an ethnicity are issues of conscience and self-determination. In International Law no generally established characteristics exist, nor accepted general definitions for a nation or people. The right to self-determination is a right based in jus cogens and cannot become the subject of a contractual arrangement. confirm that this was the agreement. Now, as it has been said many times before we (wikipedia) are not here to create a new reality, but to record the facts. We cannot decide about how the citizenship will be called, because this is a legal term and if we decide on arbitrary criteria how to rephrase it will be rejected as WP:OR. The only thing that we can do is to agree on a term that should be used to describe a person as an introduction to who he/she is, like we do in opening paragraphs of person biographies and this term is called "nationality" by wikipedia. To do so we must take into account both WP:OFFICIALNAME and WP:COMMONNAME, neither of which is "North Macedonian". There was a lengthy discussion more than 10 years ago on what terminology should be used to disambiguate Macedonia, and there was a consensus on that. The Prespa agreement has changed the name of the state to North Macedonia, but hasn't changed anything regarding people, except the legal relationship between a citizen and the state, something that I'm sorry we don't have any word on it, but to record it as it is "Macedonian/citizen of North Macedonia". No circumstances have arisen to change the way that we are using to describe people in wikipedia and even if we decide that there is a discrepancy we have to respect the right to self identify. Circumstances indeed might change in the future, and if they do we then have to document them, but we are not here to predict them. --Argean (talk) 12:48, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

@Argean: Thank you for your time. I absolutely agree with all you said. All people in North Macedonia who want to be called Macedonians have the right of self-determination to do it, and the same applies to all those people who want to be called Albanians or Turks in North Macedonia. We do not discuss that. We discuss only the name that we (not every individual person) use for them, and since we refer to all of them collectively, this cannot be the name of one of these groups, because it does not identify all of them. Unless you know that a specific person of this country is an ethnic Macedonian, you cannot call him Macedonian, for the simple reason that it is offensive. And even if you call someone Macedonian, you have to explicitly say an ethnic Macedonian to avoid confusion. Macedonian is not the national identity of people in North Macedonia. The country is called North Macedonia and we have to accept it. If we start negotiating the name of the people, why we don't do it for the name of the language too, e.g., Slavomacedonian? Either we accept everything or nothing. It's fine if you want to have a different opinion for your own reasons, but we cannot call it a reasonable opinion without respecting the reality and official agreements. Peace in balkans (talk) 13:22, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

@Peace in balkans: Everybody can call them as he/she wants, and they have the right to call themselves also as they want not only as individuals but as a collective group of people. Tsipras, Kotzias and Katrougkalos have said that many times [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] and they never said that someone can identify as Macedonian ethnically and as a North Macedonian nationally. It's the right to use a single term for self-identification, no matter how this translates to everyone's language or minds. A French person is always a French no matter what ethnic identity might have (Basque, Breton, Alsatian, Catalan, etc). The term Macedonian has been being used for ethnic Albanians with no problem so far and as Antondimak notices below they still want the term to be used to describe them. If the Albanians were unhappy and wanted to be called North Macedonians I believe that it would be clearly stated at some point, but obviously this is not the case. And sure it's good for everyone to have their own minds, but as I said before wikipedia is here to record the facts, not to to make a poll of what people think is right or wrong. --Argean (talk) 13:42, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

@Argean: Albanians officially asked to replace the word "Macedonian" with "Albanian" in the citizenship, i.e., "Albanian/citizen of North Macedonia". And Albanians didn't agree with the word Macedonian in the end before the change of the constitution, when Zaev was looking for two votes. Albanians were also the reason for the extra clarification in the constitution, because they are not Macedonians. Please don't spread wrong information. Peace in balkans (talk) 13:48, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

@Peace in Balkans: Sure you can go on and shout that other spread misinformation, but when you do so please say things how they are not how you interpret them. The problem was never the ethnicity question because this was never part of the agreement, but the translation of the word nationality in Albanian, i.e. [9] In Albania and Kosovo, the word nationality (kombësi) is never used to stand for membership in the Albanian, Macedonian or Kosovan nation states. The word citizenship (shtetësi) is used instead. (a native Albanian speaker could help us further in that issue). Anyway as a result they had to negotiate to find a middle ground for the official documents [10]. Something similar happened to many Greeks (including K. Mitsotakis) confusing the words "ιθαγένεια" and "εθνικότητα", which led to the Greek government asking for the note verbale to clarify the issue [11], [12]. In any case the fact is that the term "North Macedonians" was never negotiated from anyone and for anyone. I have no idea if the Albanians will prefer to be called Macedonian Albanians or North Macedonian Albanians, but this is just a speculation far beyond of what we are trying to do now. --Argean (talk) 14:39, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

As you said, the official term is "Macedonian/Citizen of North Macedonia". However, it has been made, in my opinion, abundantly clear by both sides and by the UN, and the short for should be "Macedonians". I agree, this isn't intuitive. It's very confusing for readers when we talk about "North Macedonia", "North Macedonian mountains", "the North Macedonian PM" and "Macedonian citizens". We are going against readers' best interest. However, at least for the time being, I am convinced that this is the options that will cause the least problems for the future. I trust that the people that made the agreement know the dangers and preferred it being that way. I'm waiting for Kotzias' interview today, he might give some new information that changes my mind. But for now, I firmly believe that's what the deal meant to happen. --Antondimak (talk) 11:35, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

@Antondimak: If it were abundantly clear, it would be in the official documents. UN state explicitly that the Inhabitants of North Macedonian are called: "Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia" as you can confirm yourself with the link on the bottom of this page. Indeed, Matthew Nimetz talked about Macedonian identity, but identity is not the citizenship. It's the ethnicity. Otherwise, Albanians would have the same identity with rest of the people in North Macedonia. Do you see that this makes no sense? The agreement says that when we talk about the state the qualifier North is used. The people of North Macedonia are about the state, because we talk about all of them collectively. If we talk individually about someone then we can use the term "ethnic Macedonian" and this is also confirmed from the agreement. Could you please explain me what do you mean "least problems for the future"? What is wrong with the term "North Macedonian"? Is the name of the country "North Macedonia" or am I missing something? What do you mean you trust the people that made the agreement? Zaev and Tsipras interpreted the agreement in a different way to convince the people in the two countries. Moreover, if you see what the opposition says in North Macedonia, the agreement changes their identity. Do you think we can interpret the agreement in the way we want or we have to accept what is officially written there? Tsipras said that the citizenship is not Macedonian anymore, if you think it is Macedonian, does this mean that the Prespa agreement is not valid anymore? Did you think about the danger of Greece blocking North Macedonia again in joining EU because they use the term Macedonian instead of North Macedonian? We have seen that game with the term FYROM, and this is why this country had to change the constitutional name. Do we want to build friendhsip or we want to introduce more problems? Peace in balkans (talk) 12:22, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

@Peace in balkans: Greece, North Macedonia and the UN have all either said or implied that the short form for "Macedonian/Citizen of North Macedonia" should be "Macedonian". This can't be in the agreement, because then it would mean that "Macedonian" could be used in official documents. When the deal was discussed in the Greek parliament, it was done with the common understanding that the term "Macedonian" was being given away for the language and the ethnicity. I'm almost sure that Ali Ahmeti pushed for "Macedonian" to become a term for citizenship, not only ethnicity, so that Albanians wouldn't be marginalised. By danger I mean the people behind this seem to consider a "Macedonian" citizenship a key for stability in the area, and we are heading toward possibly very distabilising times, where there is a threat of violence. --Antondimak (talk) 12:48, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Well said Antondimak. The uncertainty of the Albanian factor right now in Balkans is very important, and both resolutions of the Macedonia naming dispute and the Kosovo dispute with Serbia are key factors to push all West Balkan countries to NATO and European Union as a platform to provide stability. Yes the term "Macedonian" has been given away, but if you want a personal opinion that might be irrelevant to the discussion, this didn't happen now, it happened 27 years ago when Greece rejected the term Slavomacedonia that was proposed by Kiro Gligorov [13] opening the road to misconceptions and abuse of historical facts, which hopefully will find an end with the agreement. --Argean (talk) 13:06, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

@Peace in balkans: no misunderstandings at all. --- ❖ SilentResident ❖ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 17:31, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

I would like to butt in at this point and add that Dimitrov, North Macedonian foreign secretary, has also clarified that "Macedonian/Citizen of North Macedonia" is the nationality, and "Macedonian" is the ethnicity. In his interview that he gave, linked at the beginning of this post, he makes it clear that nationality for him is the relationship of the citizen to the state, not the ethnic identity of the individual. He says that "Macedonian" can be the ethnicity because he considers that to go under Article 7 of the agreement (where it is guaranteed that both Greece and North Macedonia use the term Macedonia(n) to mean different things), but that the nationality is "Macedonian/Citizen of North Macedonia". To quote Dimitrov: The nationality is the relation of a citizen with their country. If you open your current passport, under nationality it states Macedonian. We are a multi-ethnic society, we have the Macedonian people and we have parts of other peoples, Albanians, Turks, Serbs, Vlachs, Romani, Bosniaks and in that sense this does not determine ethnicity. Article 7 talks of people, talks of cultural heritage, identity qualifiers are given there. This provision of Article 1 considers nationality, and nationality, because we live in Macedonia is Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia. This makes perfect sense to me and it is why I think there should be a page called People of North Macedonia like there is one called British people. To give an example from personal experience, I am British in nationality but I am neither English, nor Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, or any other ethnic identity native to Britain. The same paradigm applies to North Macedonians that are not members of Macedonians (ethnic group). --Michail (blah) 18:17, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the link. This link is very important because it comes from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of North Macedonia, and the statement was made by The Foreign Minister. @Argean and Antondimak: I hope this explanation will make you understand what we are talking about. Argean You made a good point before about the name Slavomacedonia. This is one more reason to think twice about your opinion. We should not repeat the mistakes of the past, we should make progress. Peace in balkans (talk) 19:14, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

@Peace in balkans: it is true that this has been cleared out by the Foreign Minister of the Republic of North Macedonia himself. @Argean, Antondimak, and Philly boy92:, originally, I thought the same as you and I was considering Option B, just like you did. But it is this why I eventually ended up supporting Option A. Cheers! --- ❖ SilentResident ❖ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 20:49, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

@Peace in balkans and SilentResident: It is funny how reading the exact same thing we can come to so different conclusions! I was well aware of this statement and already wanted to post it earlier, because I'm afraid to say, it actually confirms the reasons why they decided explicitly to include the term "Macedonian" in the definition of citizenship (=nationality=ιθαγένεια=Државјанството=shtetësi, to avoid linguistic misunderstandings), eventually surpassing the narrow definition of ethnic identity. In any other case the statement would be just "citizen of North Macedonia", just like in Bosnia and Herzegovina where the citizenship is exactly "citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina". In my understanding Prespa was always going to be a compromise: "give me back my history, I'm giving you the identity". If you read carefully between the lines, when Tsipras and Katrougkalos say that Greece does not recognise, nor would it be able to recognise a “Macedonian nation” or “people” through this Agreement and Issues of nationality are legal issues that pertain to the relationship of the citizen with the State while, on the contrary, issues of national identity and integration into an ethnicity are issues of conscience and self-determination [14], this is actually an indirect way to say that the Greek official state cannot and will not object to the right of self-identification of a "Macedonian nation", which in Dimitrov's definition of nationality is a multi-ethnic society, where we have the Macedonian people and we have parts of other peoples, Albanians, Turks, Serbs, Vlachs, Romani, Bosniaks and in that sense this does not determine ethnicity [15]. I will use your same exact words We should not repeat the mistakes of the past, we should make progress and add that we cannot undone the mistakes of the past. After 27 years of banging our heads against the wall we have to realize that things have changed and all we have to do now is try to figure out what is our best interest for the future. I'm currently inclining towards Philly boy92's proposal to make a page for that multiethnic Macedonian nation/society that lives in the state now known as North Macedonia and adding it at the disambiguation page of Macedonians. After all we are all Macedonians, in one sense or another. --Argean (talk) 21:01, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

• @Argean and Antondimak: Sorry for another too long response, but you give me no option. So far I see that you don't respond to my questions, you just avoid giving an answer by opening unnecessary topics that I don't disagree with you. For example, you open a topic about how the word nationality is translated in Greek and Albanian that says nothing about my questions. This is how politicians respond in the parliament due to lack of reasonable arguments. But I don't think this is supposed to be how people discuss in wikipedia. On the other hand, I am trying to address your specific questions/points. We should not repeat the mistakes of political parties in Greece that did not work all together, and they preferred to focus on a blame game for political benefits. Our goal is not to blame which political party is responsible for the current situation and who is the great dealer. We should discuss with arguments and try to choose the best for our region with respect to all people. I wrote a message to you because I thought that you expressed a honest opinion, but from your response I see that you both spread incomplete or false information, which implies propaganda. Maybe, I am wrong and that's why I will list you the following facts/questions. If you have good arguments, it is very likely that I will change my opinion.
  
  

1) As you can see here in an article published in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of North Macedonia, the Foreign Minister Dimitrov clarifies that "Macedonian" is the "ethnicity", and the nationality is "Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia". Is there anything else to negotiate?

2) What Kotzias, Tsipras, Katrougkalos, Zaev and other people said does not support your opinion that the people of North Macedonia must be called "Macedonians". All of them refer to the identity/ethnicity, and they all say that people in North Macedonia can say it, but they don't say that they can write it. In wikipedia, we discuss about what we will write, not what we will say. If you have links from reliable sources that support your opinion, please report them. For example, I would like to see thousands of Albanians from North Macedonia to say "We are Macedonians, not North Macedonians".

3) North Macedonia is a country where nobody is North Macedonian in terms of ethnicity. Cyprus is an identical example (there exist Greeks and Turks). There are more examples. Why should we treat only North Macedonia differently? Is the role of wikipedia to take a side or it has to be reliable source of information?

4) We have to be very careful with one aspect. If we decide to use the term "North Macedonian" instead of "of North Macedonia" for whatever is related to the state, which means that we do not follow the Prespa agreement, then there is no excuse to say that the term "North Macedonian" does not exist in the Prespa agreement for the people, and this is why we should call them "Macedonians". Therefore, if we call the people "Macedonians" then we have to accept the very restricted form for the state too, i.e., "of North Macedonia". In other words, either we accept the whole Prespa agreement or nothing. We are not here for negotiations.

5) The Prespa agreement does not use the term "North Macedonian" about the people, but it does not use the term "Macedonian" either. Therefore, the safe way is to use the term "People of North Macedonia". The role of wikipedia is not to start a new round of negotiations and change the agreement that took 27 years. If the people in terms of "citizenship/nationality" were "Macedonians", it would be clearly written in the agreement. If you think that they put this long term in the agreement so that people can cheat later and violate the agreement, then you understand that you have very wrong mentality. The term "Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia" is a diplomatic trick, which served as a compromise between the two countries. The greek parliament ratified the agreement based on the official document that doesn't say "Macedonian". If you think that we should modify the content of the agreement after the ratification (in favour of any country), you understand that the agreement will not be accepted by people of both countries in the long term. You talked about stability in the region before.

6) There was an intermediate agreement about the name FYROM, and it was ignored by both countries. After 27 years, the two countries made a new agreement because Greece blocked North Macedonia in NATO and EU. And, they decided to make a compromise for the simple reason that if one country gets everything, the other country is not motivated to accept/respect the agreement. Do you think the people in any of these countries are silly to accept any amendment of the agreement after the ratification? Please keep in mind that Mitsotakis officially said he will block North Macedonia in EU. Is your goal to prove that Mitsotakis is right? In my opinion, we should do our best to show that this agreement was the perfect deal for the two countries. We should not forget that North Macedonia cannot block Greece, but Greece can still block North Macedonia in EU. So, North Macedonia cares about this agreement, not Greece. Do you see that the term "North Macedonian" is the only option to make this agreement viable in the long term? It makes a distinction from Greek Macedonians, and it allows room for a Macedonian ethnicity to the 60% of North Macedonia, which is confirmed from the Macedonian language. The future of North Macedonia depends heavily on this agreement.

7) You said that the term Macedonian has been used for Albanians without problem so far. How do you know that? The name of the country changed less than a week ago. Albanian members of the parliament officially stated that they don't want the term "Macedonian" in the citizenship and they want to delete it or replace it with "Albanian". This is why they added extra clarification in the constitution. And two Albanians didn't want to vote the final amendments of the constitution because of that. These facts are available everywhere. How can you ignore them? Can you report reliable sources of Albanias who say that they prefer "Macedonian" from "North Macedonian"? If not, please don't spread wrong information.

8) You talk about "Macedonian Albanians" or "North Macedonian Albanians", but none of them are names of all people in the country called North Macedonia. With every message you open unnecessary topics. We need a name that identifies all people of North Macedonia. So, the question is do the Albanians prefer "Macedonian" or "North Macedonian" for their simple version of "citizenship"? The answer is very simple according to Albanian members of the parliament in North Macedonia, but you try to make it complicated and I don't know why. Please keep in mind that in the end, it's not about what people prefer. If it's all about their preference, what did this country change the name? If you ignore the reality, then you will see similar problems in the near future. We have to respect all people.

9) Your statements are full of assumptions about what you think, and what was the intention and how you interpret things. This is speculation. Wikipedia is a place for neither negotiations nor political discussion. Please report only facts according to official documents. As far as I know, UN said that we do not negotiate the identity of people because it's sensitive, but they didn't say that identity is the citizenship. It's clear that all statements about the term "Macedonian" refer to ethnicity and UN explicitly say here that the "inhabitants" of North Macedonia are called "Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia". Dimitrov also confirmed that here. Could you please prove the opposite? If not, please respect this effort of two countries for peace in Balkans and stop giving arguments to nationalists.

10) Your arguments are similar to those used by politicians who want to spread propaganda (left-wing and right-wing). A great example is Nikos Filis who said in the Greek parliament that the Treaty of Bucharest splits Macedonia in three countries. But if you read the Treaty of Bucharest, it says nothing about Macedonia. The point is not who says what, but who has arguments. Peace in balkans (talk) 20:50, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

TL;DR but on no 10 I have to say that you are, with all due respect, wrong. The Treaty of Bucharest does not have to mention Macedonia in writing for it to have been divided in three. Macedonia (region) existed with loosely-defined borders since the mid 19th century, and to say that it was divided in 1913 is accurate. You can see this in the Report of the International Commission To Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars (1914). The Macedonian nationalist view that Macedonia (republic) was divided in 1913 is, however, incorrect. --Michail (blah) 20:59, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

State-associated and other public entities

What term should be used when referring to state-associated entities, including governmental organisations and official ranks, as well as other public entities from North Macedonia as specified in Prespa agreement?
(Note: Other forms like "North Macedonia's" could still be used in sentences where this would normally be used to form the possessive, as for other countries)

• Option A: The term used when referring to state-associated and other public entities should be "... of North Macedonia" only e.g. Government of North Macedonia, not (North) Macedonian Government.
• Option B: The term used when referring to state-associated and other public entities should be both "North Macedonian" and "... of North Macedonia", where a similar form would be used for other countries. e.g. the North Macedonian Government or the Government of North Macedonia.
• Option C: The term used when referring to state-associated and other public entities should be "Macedonian", e.g. Macedonian Government. "... of North Macedonia" can be used where a similar form would be used for other countries.

Survey (public entities)

• Option C. The Prespa agreement may prescribe the possessive construction ("of North Macedonia") here, but having only that is syntactically far too restrictive to be linguistically viable (we couldn't even write a straightforward sentence about what happened at Prespa itself if we took it at face value: "The Greek and Macedonian prime ministers made an agreement"; are we really going to distort that to "the Greek prime minister and the one of North Macedonia"?). If we are going to use adjectives (and I mean real adjectives, not the "of" constructions the agreement falsely describes as such), then there's no reason not to use the same adjective as in all the other contexts (nationality etc.), i.e. plain "Macedonian". This, too, is in line with what seems to be the emerging practice of outside reliable sources (which is ultimately the sole criterion we have, not the Prescriptions of the Prespa agreement). Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:15, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B: The use of North Macedonian is already emerging in reliable media usage, and not allowing Wikipedia to utilise it as an alternative to 'of North Macedonia' is restrictive. Nationality does not apply to state-sponsored entities, since state-entities are not people. There is also precedent on Wikipedia for the natural adjectival form of names: someone from XYZia is an XYZian. This would also help avoid confusion with the other definitions of 'Macedonian'. --Michail (blah) 19:22, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C. A is too restrictive. C is superior to B because that's been common usage up till now and there is no concrete evidence that this will change in the foreseeable future. --Local hero ^talk 19:47, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C. Per Future Perfect's comment! — Tom^(T2ME) 20:10, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B. It is used by RS and it is unambiguous. —ThorstenNY (talk) 20:15, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A: is likely the most reliable. Jingiby (talk) 20:28, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B. Even though it isn't binding for Wikipedia, the agreement clearly states that the identifyer "North" should be used for any organisation that refers to the state. That means that in Macedonian the entities are going to include "North", and we would be removing it, creating a bit of confusion. However, the real confusion would stem from the fact that we would be using a different name for the state and its public entities. How do we expect a reader that isn't familiar with all this to figure out that when they read "Macedonian parliament", it refers to the parliament of North Macedonia, especially when there are other kinds of Macedonia too? The topic is already confusing as is, and we should not make it worse, as our primary goal is to present to inform the readers, who are almost entirely ignorant on the subject. Using "North Macedonian parliament" instead seems much simpler, follows stipulations of the agreement, and is flexible as an adjective. We also have no problem with sources, as there are already a lot of reliable sources that use the term. --Antondimak (talk) 20:31, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B. The third option should be out of the question for a reliable source, as Prespa is crystal clear when it comes to state/public entities following the new name. The first option on the other hand, though accurate is highly restrictive on everyday usage. Finally B is both accurate, easy to use, and already starting to become very common in international media usage.StevenHal (talk) 20:45, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B as per Antondimak & StevenHal --Despotak (talk) 20:57, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C as per WP:COMMONNAME, WP:NAMECHANGES & WP:CRYSTAL. The Prespa Agreement being less explicit here than in the case of nationality the choice is really between sticking to the official formulations (Option A) or with the common name (Option C). Up to the recent events, the common name has been overwhelmingly Macedonian, but even after the state name change Macedonian is used by the majority of reliable sources (see section at the bottom). Seeing Future Perfect at Sunrise's comment made on the practicality I chose Option C after some deliberation. While it is true that some media have been using North Macedonian the last few days in this context - the usage is very far from becoming a common name.Wikipedia is not a crystal ball and at this moment it's simply wrong to choose a term that might some day become the dominant one. --FlavrSavr (talk) 21:21, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B obviously! Like Antondimak has said, I do not even imagine what mess the Option C can cause, if we start calling the institutions of North Macedonia simply "Macedonian", when there is ambiguity between 3 different Macedonias. History has taught us that when a term is ambigous, it is bound to cause problems for everyone. Now that the country changed its ambiguous name "Macedonia" to a new but more distinctive one, we, as Wikipedia, should respect this instead of calling the country's institutions by demonyms that are no longer legally/politically true for/reflective of the country and its official name. Yes, the international media which in the past couple of days resisted on changing the name, such as Balkan Insight (BIRN), started switching lately to the new demonym for that country. Sure, not all media use the new name and demonym yet, but the country was just renamed. It is natural that this takes time, as we are in a transitional period from the old to the new name, but since we are called to decide, we have to take in account the new political and legal reality. --✿ SilentResident ✿ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 21:36, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B is reasonable. "of North Macedonia" seems more appropriate for Page titles (e.g. Government of North Macedonia, or Prime Minister of North Macedonia), but I don't see what should prevent us to use the natural adjectival equivalent, especially within articles, when we would do exactly the same for any other case. WP:COMMONNAME can't be easily established currently, but "Macedonian" can easily be rejected as equivalent to "of Macedonia", which in turn is against the logic of WP:OFFICIALNAME that requires just the confirmation of the name change by a number of WP:RS, that I think are already enough. Just as a side note, I believe we shouldn't translate the name of officially renamed entities in an inconsistent way (e.g. North Macedonian Radio Television ↔ Radio Television of North Macedonia) when not required. --Argean (talk) 22:00, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B Already been used widely in the media and most appopriate form. Number 57 22:11, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B The country's name is now Republic of North Macedonia and it should be reflected as such. North Macedonian is the appropriate term. Dash9Z (talk) 22:15, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B I don't see anything to discuss here. It's clear from everything that the correct term includes the word "North". The Option A is also fine, but I don't see any reason to stick on such a detail that restricts us on writing. Peace in balkans (talk) 22:47, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B It's not restrictive as Option A, and it's not ambiguous as the first form of Option C. --StanProg (talk) 22:48, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B It's not the job of Wikipedia to enforce the bureaucratic formalism of the Prespa Agreement by needlessly restricting editors to use 'of North Macedonia' but not North Macedonian. In normal English language usage, these two forms are synonymous. Therefore, if one is used, the other should also be allowed. Since not using 'of North Macedonia' is out of the question, North Macedonian must be allowed to be used as well. --Kkyriakop (talk) 23:05, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C - as per reasons outlined by @Fut.Perf. and @FlavrSavr.Resnjari (talk) 23:19, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B: Yes, as SilentResident stated, Option C will just cause a massive mess, and cause lots of cases to elevate up to some kind of arbitration. Also, as I stated in the #Nationality of People section above, "North Macedonian" is a term implying 'belonging' to the state of "North Macedonia", so I don't see its use here as unjustifiable. - Wiz9999 (talk) 02:25, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C...the nationality is Macedonian, whatever the state name. Frenchmalawi (talk) 04:18, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A. We should do that which is least likely to result in years of endless complaints about Wikipedia's practices, and that is to align ourselves as closely as possible with the provisions of the Prespa agreement. – The agreement doesn't even mention the term North Macedonian, differentiating instead between terms incorporating North Macedonia (such as of North Macedonia), to be used in this case, and the term Macedonian, expressly allowed in all other circumstances. Libhye (talk) 05:53, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A or B, so at least mentioning 'North', which is consistent with the country name. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:52, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B Already been used widely in the media and most appopriate form. --Sharouser (talk) 08:41, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B Already been used widely in the media and most appopriate form. Xaris333 (talk) 10:38, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B on the same basis as my comment on nationality of people. But if the nationality question goes for Macedonian, then we should apply option C here. Option A is too restrictive. Kahastok talk 10:42, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B as this is what people will use even if this RfC attempts to prescribe one or the other only. Thryduulf (talk) 12:31, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A I don't see how option C is permissible given that the reason for the dispute in the first place was to deny the FYRM the use of the term "Macedonian". Laurel Lodged (talk) 13:25, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B since mainstream media use it as such Weatherextremes (talk) 13:59, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B if I understand it rightly. Tet Offensive, for example, consistently uses "South Vietnamese", not "of South Vietnam". Ditto with Berlin Wall, which has dozens occurrences of "East German". And although I'm merely a Virginian (not an "East Virginian"), we're comfortable with saying that people living 100 miles northwest of me are "West Virginians". Nyttend (talk) 16:08, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A per Prespa agreement, article 1 (3) (f) - "of North Macedonia". The term "North Macedonian" is not mentioned anywhere, stop trying to invent it. sliceofcodes (talk) 16:36, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option BIn normal English language usage, these two forms are synonymous. We can't restrict editors and users on this.--APG1984 (talk) 06:14, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B Why should North Macedonia be special from other countries. – BrandonXLF (t@lk) 07:35, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C Maybe it 's too soon to decide on this matter, we should wait and see what term RSs are using. But as for now, option C seems better. It avoids the overuse of "North".Cinadon36 (talk) 08:07, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B totally natural and logic--Azeryion (talk) 08:39, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Discussion (public entities)

• Comment' [to Fut.Perf.]: It is in no way the case that of North Macedonia is too restrictive to be linguistically viable, nor is it the case that ‘we couldn't even write a straightforward sentence about what happened at Prespa itself if we took it at face value’. The sentence in question could easily be rewritten to say ‘The prime ministers of Greece and North Macedonia made an agreement’. I defy anyone to give an example of a sentence that couldn't easily be rewritten to conform with option A and remain natural-sounding. Libhye (talk) 05:53, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

"... and after signing the agreement on the shores of Lake Prespa they took a boat and travelled from the Greek side of the border to the one of North Macedonia"? ;-) Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:02, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

... and after signing the agreement on the shore of Lake Prespa, they took a boat and travelled from the Greek side of the border to that of North Macedonia. --Michail (blah) 10:42, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Do you seriously consider that decent English prose? It isn't. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:49, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

"... and after signing the agreement on the shore of Lake Prespa, they took a boat and travelled from the Greek to the North Macedonian side of the border". Option A is restrictive, while Option C has ambiguous terms, which is why I voted for Option B. --✿ SilentResident ✿ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 20:45, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Ambiguity is a red herring. The theoretical ambiguity of "Macedonia(n)" never was a problem, hasn't been a problem for our readers for the last 10 years, and won't be a problem now. (Where there really is ambiguity, i.e. real, contextual ambiguity and not just the imagined ambiguity that's such a bogeyman in the minds of Greeks, we can of course still use ad-hoc disambiguators as dictated by common sense.) But thanks for confirming that English has country adjectives for a reason: because it needs them to write proper prose; that was my whole point here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:50, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

There is no reason to be condescending. Reducing this discussion down to "a bogeyman in the minds of Greeks" is a little bit disingenuous given that numerous non-Greek editors have raised serious concerns not only relating to the ambiguity of Macedonia(n) re Macedonia (region), but also non-ethnic Macedonians within North Macedonia. --Michail (blah) 20:57, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Adjective

What adjective should be used to refer to other entities from North Macedonia, not specified above? This includes article titles, references in articles and the infobox on the main article.

• Option A: The adjective used to refer to such entities from North Macedonia should be "Macedonian" only, eg. the Macedonian countryside.
• Option B: The adjective used to refer to such entities from North Macedonia should be "North Macedonian" only, eg. the North Macedonian countryside.
• Option C: The adjective used to refer to such entities from North Macedonia should be either "North Macedonian" or "Macedonian", depending on context.

Survey (adjective)

• Option A with a bit of an allowance for Option C (i.e. there's no problem adding "North" if and when there's a true need of disambiguation; otherwise, the plain adjective is as good here as everywhere else, and seems to match what the majority of reliable sources have been doing. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:22, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C: Both, North Macedonian in case of something connected with the country North Macedonia and Macedonian in the case of something connected with the Macedonian ethnicity. Sashko1999 (talk) 19:49, 15 February 2019 (UTC) (struck because this editor was evading a topic ban from the topic area of Macedonia at the time of participating. ––––)
• Option A. Again, agreeing with Future's comment. No need to complicate things. — Tom^(T2ME) 20:11, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C: Jingiby (talk) 20:24, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B: this is the most logical choice. It avoids ambiguity and follows established norms of 'someone from XYZ is an XYZian'. The claim that "the majority" of sources are using 'Macedonian' as the adjective for North Macedonia is, as of writing this, at best dubious and at worst untrue. I would have gone for C but it was not defined what "context" means prior to opening the RfC so I am going for option B instead. --Michail (blah) 20:28, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C I agree with Sashko1999. --Antondimak (talk) 20:33, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C, as per Sashko1999’s argument. —ThorstenNY (talk) 20:49, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A. Agreeing with per Fut Perf. The agreement that brought all this up doesn't even use "North Macedonian". With common usage till now being "Macedonian", I see no good reason to change our treatment on WP. --Local hero ^talk 20:52, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B As done with all adjectives referring to countries, states, regions, etc. bearing directional names.StevenHal (talk) 20:57, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B as I find it to be the natural language in this case. Someone with no knowledge of the naming dispute, the history, even the existence of the country, will have no problem to discern that something "North Macedonian" is from "North Macedonia". On the other hand, "Macedonian" does not naturally lead to "North Macedonia" and it will confuse people with no knowledge of the issue. --Despotak (talk) 21:27, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A as per WP:COMMONNAME, WP:NAMECHANGES & WP:CRYSTAL. The most commonly used & short adjective was and still is Macedonian, according to the majority of reliable sources. We shouldn't speculate on the future use. Article 7.3. of the Prespa Agreement states that „when reference is made to North Macedonia, Macedonian denotes its territory, language, people and their attributes, with their own history, culture, and heritage, distinctly different from those of the“ Greek Macedonians. The United Nations also clearly established that the adjectival usage, when referring to private entities and actors, that are not related to the State or financed by it - is "Macedonian", including the adjective "Macedonian" for activities. In the very few cases where these collude or can be confused we can add "ethnic", "north". If an entity has an official name, we should use that. --FlavrSavr (talk) 21:46, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B, but Option C isn't that bad either. As long as context is written in an way that eliminates any confusion. Initially, I favored only the Option C since I feel there may be any context where both may be needed, but after reading the arguments in the Discussion, I believe Option B can avoid some of the ambiguous issues Option C entails. --✿ SilentResident ✿ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 21:57, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B as already being used in the media. Offers the most clarity. Number 57 22:12, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C and further specify the content. As such my logic says that we shouldn't rename terms related to people, the language, and the culture in all its' aspects (e.g. the Macedonian cuisine, a Macedonian film, etc), especially in all cases that it hasn't been required so far by the need to disambiguate with the respective attributes associated with Greek Macedonians, per current policies of WP:MOSMAC. Same policies should apply to any new articles and when necessary clearly differentiate the attributes of the 2 people that arise from their different history and culture. In case that adjectives refer to the country, as a legal or a geographic entity, including any international representation or any official activity within the country of North Macedonia, I think that the term North Macedonian should be the first and in some cases the only option, when an adjectival reference is used e.g. "North Macedonian National Team", "North Macedonian Football Championship, "North Macedonian economy", "North Macedonian banking system", etc. Beware that WP:COMMONNAMES may take a very long time to be valid in some instances. --Argean (talk) 22:18, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B. Comes naturally. It should be use for everything to give the most clarity. Dash9Z (talk) 22:29, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B. With the exception of topics related exclusively to the Ethnic Macedonians, like Macedonian cuisine, Macedonian traditions, etc, which are not limited within the state boundaries. --StanProg (talk) 23:00, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B when referring to the country of North Macedonia. The adjective version of North Macedonia in the English language is North Macedonian. Anything else violates Wikipedia:Use_plain_English and Wikipedia:Remember_the_reader. The adjective Macedonian can be used when referring to the ethnic group of Macedonians (e.g. Macedonian traditions), to the language (e.g. Macedonian grammar) or to the region as a whole. --Kkyriakop (talk) 23:20, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A -Resnjari (talk) 23:15, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B The dispute over the name Macedonia is unimportant for the majority of the world, but it took 27 years to be resolved, showing how important is for the people of the two countries. Some of the comments that I read show me that people do not understand that the confusion of the last 27 years was the reason for all the problems of North Macedonia. We have the chance to make progress and avoid any confusion by respecting the Prespa agreement, which means the decision of both countries. What is the motivation to still use a term that created confusion and introduced only problems for North Macedonia and Greece? When North Macedonia changes signs and all names in the whole country, I fail to understand why we discuss here whether we should use the same names in wikipedia or not. Simplicity is always good but is different than using confusing terms. I don't think that someone of us is more important than the two countries, such that we can decide the name of the country. There was a negotiation that lasted more than six months, which end up in the Prespa agreement. Why do we need to re-negotiate everything from scratch? Both countries made a compromise; it's a difficult compromise, but we have to accept it. Unless we refer to people who call themselves Macedonians (self-determination), we should use the term North Macedonian since it's about the country North Macedonia. If we talk about food, it makes sense to call it "Macedonian" if we want to make a connection to the ethnic group, which means we want to explicitly exclude other ethnic groups. However, if we want to talk about a food that is well-known in the whole country, it makes no sense to call it "Macedonian". Peace in balkans (talk) 23:24, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B: "North Macedonian" only, for the reasons I stated in the last two sections. - Wiz9999 (talk) 02:25, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A as that is the nationality of the people and they did not give that up under the Prespa Agreement, one they were forced to enter into by a neighbournig bully-state that would not respect their right to self-determination. Frenchmalawi (talk) 04:22, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A. We should do that which is least likely to result in years of endless complaints about Wikipedia's practices, and that is to align ourselves as closely as possible with the provisions of the Prespa agreement. – The agreement doesn't even mention the term North Macedonian, differentiating instead between terms incorporating North Macedonia (such as of North Macedonia), to be used in a set of specifically defined circumstances, and the term Macedonian, expressly allowed in all other cases. Libhye (talk) 05:34, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B, consistent with the country name. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:55, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B. We should renam Macedonian cuisine to North Macedonian cuisine. --Sharouser (talk) 08:45, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B As done with all adjectives referring to countries, states, regions, etc. bearing directional names. Xaris333 (talk) 10:40, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B. Sashko1999 makes an interesting point here, that is addressed below. I take this section to mean the adjective for things of or pertaining to North Macedonia, as opposed to things of or pertaining to the Macedonian people or culture. My arguments elsewhere apply here too (we're guessing at future usage whatever we do and the situation is parallel to South Korea and East Timor) but this seems to me to be the more likely finishing point. If things of or pertaining to the Macedonian people or culture are included, then my choice is Option C. Kahastok talk 10:52, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C. It is impossible to specify either one or the other exclusively without allowing for context, so we should explicitly allow whatever is best in context. For example it is not unlikely that reliable sources in different fields will adopt different conventions and forcing our articles to depart from that is just going to cause confusion and acrimony. Thryduulf (talk) 12:35, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option D Avoid adjectives altogether. "The countryside of North Macedonia". Laurel Lodged (talk) 13:28, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option Bis the least ambiguous Weatherextremes (talk) 14:01, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Treat like Korea. I assume that's closest to B, since we don't use "Korean" to refer to something only pertaining to Pusan or Seoul, but if we're talking about a cultural or physical-geographic topic that extends into Bulgaria or Greece, use simply "Macedonian", just as we do when talking about something like climate that's present in both Pyongyang and Seoul. Nyttend (talk) 16:03, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A per Prespa agreement, Article 7 regarding terms "Macedonia" and "Macedonian". Wikipedia should not invent terms. The agreement was specifically careful with this. When it needs to be disambiguated, then " of North Macedonia" or similar form should be used. sliceofcodes (talk) 17:16, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option Bis the least ambiguous. I agree with the argument about ethnic Macedonians but here we talk about something country-wide. Option B does not exclude usage of Macedonian for ethnic Macedonian-related things.--APG1984 (talk) 06:19, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B if it's about the country, then use the country name in the adjective to avoid any confusion. – BrandonXLF (t@lk) 07:32, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B is the natural choice--Azeryion (talk) 08:35, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Discussion (adjective)

• Future Perfect at Sunrise As of writing this note, the claim that a majority of sources are using 'Macedonian' as an adjective is dubious at best given that the list of media links was uploaded without considering a number of issues raised with some of the sources in the talk page. --Michail (blah) 19:40, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Also it was agreed not to include links in the official media link depository that are dated pre 12 February, but reliable and official sources which have used the adjective "North Macedonian" prior to that date include Balkan Insight [16], Euronews [17], the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe [18] (PDF no longer available online), Al Jazeera [19], Bloomberg News [20], the Greens–European Free Alliance [21] (this file downloads), the Toronto Star [22], The Athens-Macedonian News Agency [23], ABC News [24] (uses both), The Hill [25], and The Guardian [26], and the draft congradulatory resolution of the United States Senate [27], as presented in the original discussion before the cut-off date of 12 February was introduced. The original purpose was to demonstrate that 'North Macedonian' is entering English as a viable and common alternative to "of North Macedonia" when referring the the country. --Michail (blah) 20:21, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Since you are mentioning methodology once more I will copy-paste what I already wrote on the Talk page: In research when you want to report accuracy you need to have a set of predetermined criteria that meet the standard of reproducibility. That means that the same results should be able to be obtained by anyone that follows the reported methodology. If this is not possible the study can be rejected as biased. If we don't set a specific set of criteria that should apply for all sources that are included in the media repository, I'm really sorry but I feel that we are failing the criterion of accuracy and we could be accused of bias, thus failing the criterion of neutrality as well. I can't see where your objections stem from. I'll remind you that if we include articles before 12/02 we should also check how common are the sources that use the term "Macedonian" for the same time frame --Argean (talk) 12:38, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• Question: if the most voted option is "C per Sashko1999", does that mean that Sashko's reasoning becomes part of the RfC? What I mean to say is, if his option becomes the most popular choice, does the official interpretation of this policy will be North Macedonian in case of something connected with the country North Macedonia and Macedonian in the case of something connected with the Macedonian ethnicity? If that is the case, I would consider switching my vote to C. --Michail (blah) 20:58, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• Excellent point, Philly boy92! Yes, I would hope this reasoning becomes part of the RfC. If it doesn’t, I would consider changing my vote to Option B. After re-reading the description of the item, I would be declined to distinguish between entities from North Macedonia (which, by definition, are of the modern country) and entities connected to culture, language, ethnicity etc., which would fall outside the scope of the country. —ThorstenNY (talk) 21:23, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Well the original intention of this section of the RfC related to the national adjective and didn't relate to anything to do with ethnicity/culture (as this was being addressed by another section entirely). However, through the revisions during drafting it seems to have lost some of this intent in the phrasing of the question. I'm sure that many editors voting option B at the moment are under the belief that this section relates to the adjective on a country wide scale and not to the principal ethnicity. For instance, if I order a kettle that is made in North Macedonia to be delivered to my house, then when it arrives is that a "Macedonian" kettle, or a "North Macedonian" kettle? Similarly, what is a commercial company from North Macedonia called? Is it a "Macedonian" company, or a "North Macedonian" company. What Sashko1999 has pointed out by his edit here is the deficiency in the section's principal question. I simply say this is a consequence of the short time we had to bring this RfC to life. However, now that it is here, the RfC is more than just a mechanism to perform voting in Wikipedia. It is a discussion process. If we see a section is deficient, we can discuss an improvement and either put that in place, still considering all prior votes to be valid (if the change is small), or to start a whole new vote on the re-worded section. We have 30 days to sort all this out now, there is still plenty of time to hold a proper vote on a re-worded section if need be. We only just started after all. Just because we drafted it like this previously does not mean it is set in stone. So if you have reservations about this section as it currently stands, we can put a pause to the voting till we can figure out how best to fix the issue and ultimately come to a consensus on the "adjective". - Wiz9999 (talk) 04:27, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

I don’t really see a lot of problems here, Wiz9999. Corporations are incorporated under state laws, so: North Macedonian company. If a pretty generic/utilitarian kettle is merely manufactured in the country, it’s a North Macedonian kettle. If it’s made in a specific Macedonian style (which presumably predates the term RoNM), it’s a Macedonian kettle. It it’s also manufactured in the country, it could be a Macedonian and North Macedonian kettle. But yeah, the next 30 days should give us a better idea how this shakes out in practice. —ThorstenNY (talk) 01:25, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option C does not necessarily exclude option A or B. 'Depending on the context', if the context is broader than North Macedonian then obviously one can use Macedonian. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:58, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• I want to clarify something about the UN's stance on adjectives, posted in the "Media Link repository". It means that the law doesn't bind private associations from naming themselves "Macedonian". Obviously we follow that, like with the Macedonian Patriotic Organization, it isn't bound by anything. However, it has essentially nothing to do with using adjectives in naturally in language (a North Macedonian forest), so I'm not sure it should belong there. --Antondimak (talk) 12:35, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

I would also like to point out that the position of the United Nations, NATO, and the European Union among others, which prescribed the use of "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", did not guide the previous RfC and they should not guide this one. --Michail (blah) 12:39, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

THAT is an excellent point. 👍 - Wiz9999 (talk) 12:54, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Previously the UN used a different name than the country itself. Now they are in agreement. --Antondimak (talk) 13:51, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• By the United Nations the terms North Macedonian and Macedonian can't be used officially, but here we must use one of them, and because in the Prespa agreement exist the term of North Macedonia, it's logical to use the term North Macedonian, even if didn't exist, this term is logical. Macedonian, as I said before, should be used in cases where something is connected with the Macedonian ethnicity.

https://unterm.un.org/UNTERM/Display/Record/UNHQ/NA/1c98d616-3b6a-4d15-a7cb-f88c7f988b83

NOTE: The adjectival reference to the State, its official organs, and other public entities as well as private entities and actors that are related to the State, are established by law, and enjoy financial support from State for activities abroad shall be in line with its official name or its short name, that is of the Republic of North Macedonia or of North Macedonia. Other adjectival references, including North Macedonian and Macedonian may not be used in all of the above cases. Sashko1999 (talk) 15:42, 16 February 2019 (UTC) (Struck because the editor was evading a topic ban. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:01, 17 February 2019 (UTC))

These are just the internal guidelines of the UN. Wikipedia is not obliged to follow them - are the people who are presenting it as proof suggesting that we should use the UN’s guidelines on wikipedia over what is common and natural in English, not to mention that which will avoid any semiological confusion? Three points:

1. The UN is not an encyclopaedia and therefore does not have the same requirements for clarify as Wikipedia might have. The context in which the UN guidelines will be applied, i.e. the UN diplomatic corps, has far fewer opportunities for confusion as an article relating to the various definitions of Macedonia on an encyclopaedia.
2. Wikipedia did not follow the UN/EU/NATO/OECD guidelines before when they prescribed the name “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”. I find it highly unlikely that the people so enthusiastically presenting the UN guidelines and the Prespa Agreement as a reason as to why North Macedonian should not be allowed on wikipedia would have also argued with the same fervour to impose the nomenclature of the Interim accord instead of the name “Republic of Macedonia”.
3. The Prespa Agreement recognises that Greece also has a right to use the term Macedonia and explicitely states that neither of the two can monopolise the term. If we are using the Prespa Agreement as an argument for validity, should this not become policy too? Who decides that ‘Macedonian’ culture can only mean ethnic Macedonian and not Greek Macedonian? The agreement makes it clear that it is both, furthering my point regarding the need to avoid ambiguity.

This pretty much sums up my opposition to using the Prespa Agreement or the UN guidelines as definitive proof that North Macedonian should not be allowed to be used on Wikipedia, especially since in ghe media links section is it (as of writing this) more common as an adjective. The original NCMAC reasoning made it clear that international agreements are not how Wikipedia determines things, and I do not think that this logic is less valid in this RfC. —Michail (blah) 16:02, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• @Sliceofcodes: Misquoting the Prespa Agreement again, as you did above. Article 7 clearly refers to respective [sic] understanding of the terms between the two nations/peoples and does not work in establishing an adjective for the country (something that should obviously follow the state's name) for any form of international usage. --StevenHal (talk) 23:59, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Historical names

What should be used in place of Macedonia and Republic of Macedonia in other articles about the periods and events between 1991 and 2019?

• Option A: Macedonia and Republic of Macedonia should still be used in historical articles.
• Option B: Macedonia and Republic of Macedonia should still be used in historical articles, with an optional note similar to "now North Macedonia".
• Option C: North Macedonia and Republic of North Macedonia should be used in place of Macedonia and Republic of Macedonia in historical articles.

Survey (historical names)

• Option B as that is how it seems to be dealt with in comparable situations. "Now-North Macedonia" should be added where it is seen as necessary. --Local hero ^talk 19:01, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B, this one's pretty obvious. There should be lots of leeway for pragmatical solutions in individual contexts; no need to handle this dogmatically and pedantically. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:24, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B per above --Michail (blah) 19:36, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B per above --Despotak (talk) 19:39, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B. Per above. — Tom^(T2ME) 20:12, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B: Jingiby (talk) 20:23, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B There seems to be consensus for this one. It's pretty straightforward. --Antondimak (talk) 20:36, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B, with the caveat that the optional clarification is truly optional and should only be used to avoid ambiguity. —ThorstenNY (talk) 20:52, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B would be the best choice StevenHal (talk) 20:59, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B. Per above. --FlavrSavr (talk) 21:52, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A as per standard practice; option B will create endless edit warring when problem editors insist that "now North Macedonia" is needed, when it clearly isn't. Number 57 22:02, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B, per Fut.Perf., and I agree with ThorstenNY's rationale on the use of the optional text. --Argean (talk) 22:23, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C. This option is the closest to what I would suggest: North Macedonia, known as the Republic of Macedonia at the time. It offers consistency and clarity as to what entity it is referring to. Dash9Z (talk) 22:35, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B It's more open. It covers Option A, with the possibility to add clarification if and when it's necessary. --StanProg (talk) 23:04, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B - Resnjari (talk) 23:21, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B for me as well. I suggested this option for a while now, even before this RfC. --✿ SilentResident ✿ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 23:33, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B: "Republic of Macedonia" is acceptable, with the added note of "now North Macedonia" being optionally used for both instances ("Republic of Macedonia"/"Macedonia"), as suggested. Though I feel notable effort should be made to reduce the overall specific occurrences of "Macedonia" over the far more acceptable "Republic of Macedonia" for this time period. - Wiz9999 (talk) 02:25, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A, being COMMON NAME and the use of the note “(now North Macedonia)” is silly as all readers know very well that there is not any other Republic with a Macedonian name. It’s still stuff. Cluttering articles with politics. Frenchmalawi (talk) 04:25, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B, Per above. Xaris333 (talk) 10:41, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B is the obvious choice, but I agree with User:ThorstenNY that the text should only be used to avoid ambiguity. Kahastok talk 11:01, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B. I fail to see how anything else could work in practice, especially as the X (now Y) formulation is standard across historical articles. Thryduulf (talk) 12:42, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C optional notes mean that in practice no notes would be used. Laurel Lodged (talk) 13:31, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B per Future's comment, and because it's the only logical solution sliceofcodes (talk) 17:19, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B Seems pretty standard, having (now North Macedonia) could be helpful. – BrandonXLF (t@lk) 07:31, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C as per Dash9Z--Azeryion (talk) 08:36, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Discussion (historical names)

• Clarification of my concerns. The way B is worded right now, some editors might take it as license to add something like “now-Macedonia” pretty much everywhere, which is not something I would want to support. Is it possible to clarify here or with our votes for B that any optional note should be used sparingly and only to avoid ambiguity? Otherwise we might end up with countless instances of unnecessarily unwieldy terms. Unfortunately there is ample precedent for such uncalled-for hyper-correctness. I’m thinking of people wrongly insisting on constructs such as “the former GDR” (when referring to East Germany between 1945 and 1990) and “the former Soviet Union”. —ThorstenNY (talk) 21:33, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• There may be a problem with how restrictive the wording is. If we are intending to talk about the country in the past, and we don't use "North Macedonia", we are already disregarding the common name. Thus we should use the name used at the time. Therefore, I don't think it would be wrong to rename Macedonia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 to "F.Y.R. Macedonia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2007". In this case using "Macedonia" makes no sense, as it isn't the common name, and it isn't the name that was used either. It's the common name at the time the article refers to. It's like calling the Byzantine Empire "Rhomania" because that was the common name at the time. --Antondimak (talk) 08:36, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
  • So is anybody going to clarify if that will be allowed? --Antondimak (talk) 11:43, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Non-contentious housekeeping

The following proposals are not seen as contentious and are grouped together for convenience.

• Option A:

• The main article should be titled North Macedonia
• North Macedonia and Republic of North Macedonia should be used in place of Macedonia and Republic of Macedonia in articles about the present.
• The language, ethnicity, and culture should be called Macedonian.

• Option B: One or more of the above proposals is opposed, and further discussion is needed first.

Survey (housekeeping)

• support (i.e. "Option A"); these are straightforward common sense, and the naming of the main article has already been discussed and found very broad consensus. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:25, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A --Despotak (talk) 19:40, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A --Michail (blah) 19:45, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A consensus was achieved on main article title (though I still disagree with it). --Local hero ^talk 19:52, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A. — Tom^(T2ME) 20:13, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A: Jingiby (talk) 20:22, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A —ThorstenNY (talk) 20:54, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A --Antondimak (talk) 21:39, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A --FlavrSavr (talk) 21:53, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A Most major news sources call the country North Macedonia or a derivative, and the agreement did not change the name of the culture etc. --Danski454 (talk) 22:19, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A with a possible additional clause to reaffirm all uncontested policies of WP:MOSMAC. --Argean (talk) 22:25, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A --StanProg (talk) 23:05, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A - Resnjari (talk) 23:06, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A and this pairs pretty well with Option A in the "Nationality" section, which helps avoid confusion. --✿ SilentResident ✿ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 23:36, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A: I sort of crystal-ball-predict that the 'language', 'ethnicity', and 'culture' stuff actually being looked at again at some point in the future, but as of right now all points listed are completely uncontroversial, and should be adopted immediately without issue. - Wiz9999 (talk) 02:25, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B respecting COMMON NAME convention. Frenchmalawi (talk) 04:30, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A. Libhye (talk) 06:12, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A Xaris333 (talk) 10:44, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A, I view this as simple housekeeping. This can be revisited in the future if there is a reason to, but I don't see it. Kahastok talk 11:04, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A — sliceofcodes (talk) 17:23, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A – BrandonXLF (t@lk) 07:28, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option ACinadon36 (talk) 08:02, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A logical--Azeryion (talk) 08:37, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option A - the renaming of the main article was so strongly supported that it is surprising that it is being discussed again. Oculi (talk) 17:17, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Discussion (housekeeping)

• I will agree with A if I remain alone in this, but are you sure we should keep "Macedonian" when referring to culture? I agree it's sufficient in most cases, but in certain contexts (like when ethnic Macedonians and Greek Macedonians are mentioned in the same article), I think it's very confusing not to use an identifier. Wouldn't it be simpler to allow editors to use the identifier "Slavic" in contexts where they believe it will make understanding the article simpler? --Antondimak (talk) 20:42, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
  • We've always allowed ad-hoc disambiguators if and when they are truly needed in context. The old text of WP:NCMAC goes into some detail about that. It's a matter of common sense. "North" will sometimes work as a legitimate disambiguator now, just as "Slavic" always has, and even "former Yugoslav" might have done in some contexts. I suppose that principle should silently be carried over into the new text that's going to be hacked out from the results of this RfC. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:29, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
    • I agree then. --Antondimak (talk) 21:39, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Meta-Housekeeping

Levivich previously closed this discussion. Per a conversation here this is has now been undone. Exact Reason closed with was: Option A per WP:SNOW. 21:19, 16 February 2019 (UTC) ―Matthew J. Long -Talk-^☖ 04:57, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Just for clarity, since people seem to be wondering, the reason this section is here is to get a consensus that meets the standard that Arbcom laid out in June 2018 in response to the Prespa Agreement:

The Arbitration Committee clarifies that Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Macedonia) may be modified by an RfC discussion. The discussion must remain open for at least one month after it is opened, and the consensus must be assessed by a panel of three uninvolved contributors.

Given the on-wiki history of the dispute, and the fact that the agreement remains controversial in both countries IRL, it seems a good idea to prevent future dispute by ensuring that i's are dotted and t's are crossed. Kahastok talk 17:40, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Other proposals

Other proposals that do not fit into the above categories may be added here during the early period of discussion.

"Northern Macedonia" and "Southern Macedonia" Redirects

Northern Macedonia and Southern Macedonia are redirect pages that are potentially ambiguous terms. Where should these two pages redirect to?
(Note: A statement at the top of the target page will inform of the redirect)

• Option A: "Northern Macedonia" and "Southern Macedonia" should both redirect to "Macedonia (region)".
• Option B: "Northern Macedonia" should redirect to "North Macedonia", and "Southern Macedonia" should redirect to "Macedonia (Greece)".
• Option C: "Northern Macedonia" should redirect to "North Macedonia", and "Southern Macedonia" should redirect to "Macedonia (region)".
• Option D: "Northern Macedonia" should redirect to "Macedonia (region)", and "Southern Macedonia" should redirect to "Macedonia (Greece)".
• Option E: "Northern Macedonia" and "Southern Macedonia" should both redirect to "Macedonia".
• Option F: The redirects should be deleted.
• Option G: "Northern Macedonia" should redirect to "North Macedonia", and "Southern Macedonia" should redirect to "Macedonia".

Survey (redirects)

• Option C "Northern Macedonia" should definitely redirect to the country as it seems natural that many may mix "North" and "Northern". "Southern Macedonia", however, should only redirect to Macedonia (Greece) if and when that becomes used as a name for the region, which I have yet to see. There is logic behind redirecting to Greek Macedonia (i.e. it is south of North Macedonia), but my slight preference is to redirect to Macedonia (region). --Local hero ^talk 19:25, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Ultra vires. This RfC should define a general guideline but shouldn't micro-manage individual pages, least of all obscure redirects with little use. 19:33, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B: Most logical. Jingiby (talk) 20:20, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option E It may seem logical that "Northern Macedonia" would refer to the country and "Southern Macedonia" to the Greek region, but it's more complicated than that. We are talking about a region with a long history of competing state-sponsored propagandas and shifting terms, and there is a long history of use of these two terms before the Prespa deal. I have seen "Northern Macedonia" used to refer to 1) the country now named North Macedonia, 2) a bigger region including the country and Pirin Macedonia, and 3) the Northern part of Greek Macedonia, and "Southern Macedonia" used to refer to 1) Greek Macedonia, 2) the Southern part of Greek Macedonia, and 3) the Southern part of the country of North Macedonia. And all these uses aren't rare. In fact I have personally found them with about equal frequency in English-language sources. So I think they should redirect to the region as both terms are largely ambiguous. If they meant something specific the user can navigate from there. --Antondimak (talk) 20:51, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B. Most logical and the status quo, which shouldn’t be upset unnecessarily. I could be persuaded to support Option C if presented with compelling arguments that there is a meaningful distinction between Southern Macedonia and the Greek region. In other words, do sources ever use Southern Macedonia in describing something meaningfully different from the Greek region? —ThorstenNY (talk) 21:42, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Abstain and formally expressing my disapproval of incorporating to the RfC an issue that should be handled separately and possibly topically. I don't see what's the need of voting on 6 different proposals that address the issue superficially and partially, not taking into account both linguistic/semiological and technical considerations, e.g. the fact that South/Southern translate to the same exact word in Greek. I would like to take the chance to note also that South Macedonia (which was excluded by the discussion) currently redirects to Macedonia (Greece). --Argean (talk) 22:41, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B. Per ThorstenNY. Dash9Z (talk) 22:49, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B - Resnjari (talk) 23:26, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option Ε Initially supported Option C but fellow Wikipedians have since updated me on the issue, in the Discussion, below, and explained to me the meanings of the terms "South/Southern". Option C: Since it would be WP:OR to have South Macedonia redirected to Greece when none called it like that. The Greek part of Macedonia was called "Macedonia" by the Greeks and "Aegean Macedonia" by the ethnic Macedonians. --✿ SilentResident ✿ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 23:43, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C: As Local hero stated, the potential for users attempting to find "North Macedonia" and using "Northern Macedonia" instead is too great to be ignored. This should not be an issue to the people of North Macedonia, as "North" is new to them anyway and "Northern" wouldn't really confuse or upset them any more than the change itself does. To Greeks on the other hand, the term "Southern Macedonia" is unacceptable, and to some, downright insulting. It is better to avoid offence or misunderstanding by sending this to the geographic "Macedonia (region)" article instead. - Wiz9999 (talk) 02:25, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option E. Both Northern Macedonia and Southern Macedonia are used to mean multiple things, so readers should be taken to the disambiguation page, where they can find out where they want to go. For Northern Macedonia, A and D are bad options because most readers will be searching for North Macedonia, and B and C are not good alternatives either, since Northern Macedonia doesn't necessarily mean the same as North Macedonia. For Southern Macedonia, B and D are bad options because Southern Macedonia doesn't necessarily refer to an area in Greece, and options A and C are bad because they take readers directly to Macedonia (region) when they might want Macedonia (Greece). Basically, all other options than E are fraught with problems. Libhye (talk) 06:52, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Mix of B and F: "Northern Macedonia" should redirect to the country, delete "Southern Macedonia" because this name is hardly being used. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:08, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option E or F Xaris333 (talk) 10:45, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option E The term "Northern Macedonia" must not redirect to North Macedonia when it is used in terms of geography, because there is already the Bulgarian region that is in the north. The term Northwestern Macedonia may refer to the country North Macedonia and the term Northeastern Macedonia may refer to the Bulgarian region. However, these terms make everything complicated without a good reason. Moreover, the terms "South Macedonia" and "Southern Macedonia" must not refer to Macedonia in Greece for the reason explained below. To be neutral, I think the safest option is that both terms redirect to "Macedonia" (best option for me) or they are deleted. The Prespa agreement says: "When reference is made to the First Party, these terms (i.e., Macedonia and Macedonian) denote not only the area and people of the northern region of the First Party, but also their attributes, as well as the Hellenic civilization, history, culture, and heritage of that region from antiquity to present day." On the other hand, for the Second Party says: "... these terms denote its territory, language, people and their attributes, with their own history, culture, and heritage, distinctly different from those referred to under Article 7(2).". The Prespa agreement makes clear that the two countries have a different definition of what is Macedonia. For Greece, Macedonia is only the region in Greece based on the definition of the ancient Macedonian Kingdom. On the other hand, North Macedonia uses the modern geographical definition, and this is the reason that is called North Macedonia. If we call Macedonia, Greece as "South Macedonia" that means that we use the definition of North Macedonia to refer to the Macedonia region in Greece. In other words, it means that we take a side, and wikipedia must not take a side. Peace in balkans (talk) 10:52, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option E. If we accept that "Macedonia" might mean North Macedonia, then it follows that Ohrid might be in "southern Macedonia". If we accept that "Macedonia" might mean Macedonia (Greece), then it follows that Sidirokastro might be in "northern Macedonia". The dab page is the most logical choice to my mind. I'm inclined to say that it would be a good idea if this decision were changeable in future by WP:RFD. Kahastok talk 11:24, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option G (which I've just added). The primary topic for "Northern Macedonia" is the country now called "North Macedonia", but there is no primary topic for "Southern Macedonia" (roughly equally split between the parts of the historical region that are now in Greece and the southern part of the country formerly known as Macedonia)". Thryduulf (talk) 12:47, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Not F. "Northern Macedonia" is an obvious error for "North Macedonia", so either it needs to redirect there, or it needs to be a redirect pointing somewhere else. And if we have a "Northern Macedonia" redirect and an article entitled "North Macedonia", people are going to expect there to be pages entitled "South Macedonia" and "Southern Macedonia". I don't know what's best, but people are going to be searching for these terms, and whether we redirect them to Macedonia or to a specific article, they need to be blue links. Nyttend (talk) 15:59, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option C because "Northern" can be a mistake for "North". Anything else should refer to the Macedonia (region) page — sliceofcodes (talk) 17:30, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option B (or G) seems the most logical. – BrandonXLF (t@lk) 07:27, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Discussion (discussion)

• I don't have a view on this, except to point out that the phrase ultra vires means "beyond the powers", which doesn't apply here - editors are free to express their opinions. 92.19.174.217 (talk) 20:17, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
• Just a small notice @SilentResident:, South Macedonia already redirects to Macedonia (Greece) and we are currently discussing only about Southern Macedonia! South and Southern are two different things :) --Argean (talk) 23:58, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

I see. Still I can't see the difference :( Just Greek Macedonia is known by none of these 2 terms. --✿ SilentResident ✿ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 00:30, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

@SilentResident: It's a linguistic issue, but it can easily become complicated because it can have vastly different meanings, something that doesn't occur in Greek for example. Southern (and Western, Eastern, etc) is an adjective and thus always geographical attribute (e.g. Northern Pole, Eastern Europe), but without the -ern, it's a noun that can be included in the name of an official or political entity. Note the difference e.g between Western Germany and West Germany. It's one of the issues that we'll definitely have to deal with in the future, because for an English speaker South might be very different from Southern, and they can't easily figure out that there is a "North Macedonia", without a "South" if they don't know the history of the region, while Northern and Southern Macedonia will always be simply the parts of a larger geographic region. --Argean (talk) 00:55, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

We are kind of deciding on a principal here of how ambiguous redirects are to be handled going forward. Yes, these two pages specifically are being decided upon, but the overall consensus established here will be used as a reference when one or another obscure redirect comes up for discussion in future. It may not be directionally oriented like these two, but the discussions involved here will be an indispensable guide for; A. the logic and reasoning behind the decision to direct 'Page 1' to X and 'Page 2' to Y, and B. how to conduct such an RfC discussion on these Macedonian 'themed' redirects in future. I fully expect any future redirect RfCs/discussions relating to Macedonia to take place on their own talk pages after this. It should never need to be addressed by MOSMAC again, as this debate template can now be used to guide such a discussion on individual talk pages. On that note, I fully expect South Macedonia to follow the precedent set by Southern Macedonia, due to the well debated consensus that will now be established. - Wiz9999 (talk) 03:17, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

@Argean:, thanks for the clarifications. I think it is better, in the light of this, to support Option E instead. But we should review this "housekeeping" decission about redirects in the future and after we have some usage evidence regarding these terms. --✿ SilentResident ✿ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 13:58, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

@Wiz9999: I can't see how the redirections of Northern and Southern Macedonia are more important to be included in a binding RfC, than addressing the issue of the redirection of South Macedonia to Macedonia (Greece), which I raised quite a few times during the discussion, but thought that it wasn't a priority that needs to be resolved in this RfC and could be reserved for a later and maybe topical discussion over redirections. To be honest I was never expecting to have this question included in the RfC, because basically it was brought up only by you, was never discussed thoroughly, and I was surprised to find out that eventually was supported by editors that never spoke their minds during the discussion and I still doubt if they have spotted the difference of North/Northern and South/Southern, due to the fact that this difference doesn't exist in Greek language. --Argean (talk) 14:04, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• Most people have just assumed that by far Northern Macedonia commonly refers to the country while Southern Macedonia commonly refers to the Greek region. This is definitely not the case. --Antondimak (talk) 09:09, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• 1. Isn't North and Northern and South and Southern the same?, we have examples like Northern Thrace or North Thrace, East Thrace or Eastern Thrace, Western Thrace or West Thrace.
• 2. The geographical region of Macedonia contains three bigger sub-regions, the first is Macedonia (Greece) and that's the southern part, the second is North Macedonia and that's the northern part and the third is Pirin Macedonia and that's the eastern part. So, it's logical Southern Macedonia to redirect to Macedonia (Greece), Northern Macedonia to North Macedonia. Also, my proposes are to the disambiguation page of Eastern Macedonia to be added and Pirin Macedonia and East Macedonia to be redirected from East Macedonia and Thrace because East Macedonia can refer and to Pirin Macedonia. Sashko1999 (talk) 16:39, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
  • That's not what those terms mean. It may seems simple, but what you are doing is invernting new terms out of the old ones just because they "seem" right. --Antondimak (talk) 16:59, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
    • I don't invent new names, the names are already invented, North Macedonia is the northern part of the region of Macedonia, Macedonia (Greece) is the southern, the link South/Southern Macedonia already redirect there, and Pirin Macedonia is the eastern part, in Bulgaria, beside Pirin, is used and the name East Macedonia, here's a source.
    • https://infobalkani.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/%D0%B7%D0%B0-%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0-%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D0%B1%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0-%D0%B2%D0%BE/ Равносметката от войната е, че България е приобщила към своята територия единствено българите от Пиринския край. Въпреки това, според Иван Марков, за хората от Източна Македония, или сегашният Пирински край, действително това е освободителна война. (The outcome of the war is that Bulgaria has only included Bulgarians in the Pirin region. However, according to Ivan Markov, for the people of East Macedonia, or the present Pirin region, it is indeed a liberating war.) Sashko1999 (talk) 21:12, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
      • They may already be used as such in some context, but not always. They are ambiguous, and that's the exact reason we use disambiguation pages for. The source you gave is only about one term, and in Bulgarian, not English, where "East Macedonia" is more commonly used to refer to the Eastern part of the Greek region. "Northern" and "Southern" are also very ambigouous, as I mentioned in the survey. --Antondimak (talk) 21:47, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Media Link repository

Note: only include links published after February 12, 2019. Please only use Reliable Sources. Sputnik (news agency) and the Daily Mail are considered unreliable.
If the report is a reproduction from a news agency like Associated Press (USA), Reuters (UK), Agence France-Presse (France), etc. please add it along the date of publication. Thank you very much. --Despotak (talk)
Media outlets often edit/update their initial reports. If you spot inconsistencies, please edit accordingly --Despotak (talk)

Country name

International organizations:

United Nations: North Macedonia

Media reports that use the term "Macedonia": Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty[28] (published 12/02/19) (inconsistent - see below), Reuters [29] (published 13/02/19) (inconsistent - see below), Agence France-Presse[30] (published 13/02/19) (inconsistent - see below), TASS [31] (inconsistent - see below), Forbes [32] (published 16/02/19) (inconsistent - see below), Television Malta [33], Novinite [34] (inconsistent - uses also Northern Macedonia)

Media reports that use the term "North Macedonia": Associated Press [35] (published 12/02/19 and reproduced by many international media like Voice of America[36], Fox News[37], Herald Sun[38]), Associated Press[39] (published 14/02/19), Associated Press[40] (published 13/02/19 and reproduced by The New York Times[41]), Associated Press [42] (published 15/02/19 and reproduced by many international media like Montreal Gazette [43], The Province [44], National Post [45], The StarPhoenix [46], CFFR [47], CityNews [48], Vancouver Sun [49], Taiwan News [50]), Deutsche Welle[51] (published 12/02/19), The Guardian[52] (published 12/02/19), (by AP, published 13/02/19), The Irish Times[53] (published 13/02/19), CNN[54] (published 13/02/19), BBC[55] (published 14/02/19), Kathimerini[56] (published 14/02/19), France 24 [57] (by AFP, published 14/02/19, reproduced by Digital Journal [58]), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty[59] (published 12/02/19) (inconsistent - see above), Reuters [60] (published 13/02/19) (inconsistent - see above), Agence France-Presse[61] (published 13/02/19) (inconsistent - see above), Forbes [62] (published 16/02/19) (inconsistent - see above), The Independent [63] (published 13/02/19), The National Herald [64] (published 13/02/19), Euronews [65] (published 13/02/19), The Slovenia Times [66] (published 13/02/19), Axios [67] (published 13/02/19), Global News [68] (published 13/02/19), Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty [69] (published 15/02/19), Novinite [70] (published 16/02/19), Deutsche Welle [71] (published 16/02/19), Fox News [72] (by AP, published 14/02/19), First Channel (Georgia) [73], Associated Press [74] (reproduced by many media including Fox News [75], ABC News [76], Daily Mail [77], The Seattle Times [78], The Charlotte Observer [79]), First Channel [80] (published 16/02/19)

Media reports that use the term "Republic of North Macedonia": TASS [81] (inconsistent - see above)

Adjective used for people

(Note: Most, if not all, of the reports use the term as a demonym, and not as nationality by it's legal definition --Despotak (talk))

International organizations:

United Nations: “Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia”

Media reports that use the term "Macedonian": The Guardian [82] (published 12/02/19), Balkan Insight [83] (published 12/02/19), Baptist Press [84] [85] (published 13/02/19), The Independent [86] (published 13/02/19), The National Herald (Greek-American news) [87](published 13/02/19), CNN [88] (published 13/02/19), Reuters [89] (published 13/02/19), Euronews [90] (by Reuters, published 13/02/19), The Slovenia Times [91] (published 13/02/19), Axios [92], Global News [93], Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty [94], Novinite [95], Free Malaysia Today [96], Forbes [97], Deutsche Welle [98] (reproduced by Taiwan News [99]), Associated Press [100] (reproduced by many media including ABC News [101], The New York Times [102], The Washington Times [103], Japan Today [104]], Seymour Tribune [105]), The Times of India [106] (by PTI), The Malta Independent [107]

Media reports that use the term "North Macedonian": Gulf Times [108] (published 15/02/19), Greek Reporter [109] (published 12/2/2019), Daily Sabah [110] (published 15/02/19), France 24 [111] (by AFP, published 16/02/19, reproduced by The Local [112], Dunya News [113])

Media reports that use other terms: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette [114] (published 14/02/19): "13 N. Macedonians killed in bus crash"

Adjective used for State-associated entities

International organizations:

United Nations: "of the Republic of North Macedonia" or "of North Macedonia", „North Macedonian“ and „Macedonian“ may not be used

Media reports that use the term "Macedonian": BBC country profile (updated 15/02/19), The Guardian[115] (published 12/02/19), Associated Press[116] (inconsistent - see below) (published 12/02/19, reproduced by Voice of America [117], Washington Post[118]), Fox News[119] (inconsistent - see above) (by AP, published 12/02/19), (by AP, published 12/02/19), WSOC-TV [120] (by AP, published 12/02/19), Toronto Star [121] (by AP, published 12/02/19) The Independent[122] (published 13/02/19), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty[123][124] (published 12/02/19 and 13/02/19), Reuters [125] (published 13/02/19), Euronews [126] (inconsistent - see below) (by Reuters, published 13/02/19), Agence France-Presse[127] (published 13/02/19) [128] (published 14/02/19), Anadolu Agency [129] (inconsistent - see below) (published 13/02/19), Defense News [130] (published 13/02/19), The Slovenia Times [131] (published 13/02/19), US News [132] (by Reuters, published 13/02/19), BBC [133](published 14/02/19), Xinhua [134] (inconsistent - see below) (published 14/02/19), Associated Press[135] (published 14/02/19), The National Interest [136] (published 14/02/19), B92 [137] (published 14/02/19), Daily Sabah [138] (inconsistent - see below) (published 15/02/19), TRT World [139] (published 16/02/19), TASS [140] (published 16/02/19), Stars and Stripes [141] (published 16/02/19), Television Malta [142], Novinite [143]

Media reports that use the term "North Macedonian": Euronews[144] (inconsistent - see above) (published 13/02/19), Gulf Times [145] (published 13/02/19), The Irish Times[146](published 13/02/19), BloombergQuint[147](published 13/02/19), France 24 [148] (by AFP, published 14/02/19, reproduced by Manila Bulletin [149]), US News [150] (by AP, published 14/02/19), Anadolu Agency[151] (inconsistent - see above) (published 14/02/19), Xinhua [152] (inconsistent - see above) (published 14/02/19), Associated Press [153] (inconsistent - see above) (published 14/02/19 and reproduced by Washington Post [154]), Fox News [155], Idaho Statesman [156], WSPA-TV [157]), Deutsche Welle [158] ("North Macedonian flag" description, published 12/02/19), Bulgarian News Agency [159] (published 13/02/19), Xinhua [160] (inconsistent - see above) (published 14/02/19),, Daily Sabah [161] (inconsistent - see above) (published 15/02/19), Kathimerini of Cyprus [162] (published 13/02/19), Kathimerini [163] (by ANA-MPA, published 15/02/19), Associated Press (reproduced by many media including Montreal Gazette [164], The Province [165], National Post [166], The StarPhoenix [167], CFFR [168], CityNews [169], Vancouver Sun [170], Ottawa Citizen [171], Digital Journal [172]), Regina Leader-Post [173], Taiwan News [174]), First Channel (Georgia) [175], Washington Post [176] (by AP) (also published by ABC News [177])(by AP)

Media reports that use other terms: Herald Sun[178]) (by AP, published 12/02/19): "Macedonia's government", Washington Post[179] (by AP, published 13/02/19): "North Macedonia's defense minister", Associated Press[180] (published 12/02/19 and reproduced by many international media): "North Macedonia’s deputy foreign minister" Sky News[181] (published 13/02/19): North Macedonia's border, US News [182] (by Reuters, published 13/02/19), Fox News [183] Macedonia's health minister (by AP, published 14/02/19), United Nations[184] (alternative - see above) (published 14/02/19): "of North Macedonia", Kathimerini[185] (published 14/02/19): "of North Macedonia", Balkan Insight [186]: Macedonia's (published 14/02/19), Fox News: [187]: North Macedonia's (published 14/02/19), ABC News: [188]: Macedonia's health minister (by AP, published 14/02/19) Washington Post (AP) [189]: Macedonia's (published 15/02/19), SBS News [190]: North Macedonia's (published 14/02/15), Times Union [191]: Macedonia's (by AP, published 16/02/19)

Other adjectival usage

International organizations:

United Nations: "Macedonian" for activities and/or entities not associated with the State or financed by it

Media reports that use the term "Macedonian": Newcastle Herald: [192]: Macedonian film, TRT World [193]: Macedonian city, Bloomberg [194]: Macedonian city, Deutsche Welle [195]: Macedonian co-production, Film New Europe [196]: Macedonian documentary, TRT World [197]: Macedonian border town

Media reports that use the term "North Macedonian": CIRCOM [198]: North Macedonian market, SeeNews [199]: North Macedonian stock exchange, Ruptly [200]: North Macedonian film, The Washington Post [201]: North Macedonian border, KIRO [202]: North Macedonian border

Media reports that use other terms: