Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Macedonia/evidence

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This page is not for general discussion - for that, see the talk page. If you think another editor's evidence is a misrepresentation of the facts, cite the evidence and explain how it is incorrect within your own section. Please do not try to re-factor the page or remove evidence presented by others. Any such attempts, except in extreme cases like unambiguous personal attacks, will be acted upon as if they were simple vandalism.


Evidence by Shadowmorph

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English usage of the word Macedonia

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In English language the word Macedonia has a long history of use to refer to: the ancient kingdom, the region and the Greek part and since 1992 the country. See Britannica

Britannica

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In Britannica , all four Macedonias have the same title (impossible in Wikipedia) "Macedonia", "Macedonia", "Macedonia" and "Macedonia". Furthermore, Britannica student's edition lists three (no subtitles whatsoever): "Macedonia", "Macedonia" and "Macedonia"

Internet users

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With new legitimate tools we can determine context around internet searches. A Google tool lists "Macedonia" search terms

Related search terms by popularity meaning of "macedonia"
1.map macedonia Macedonia (region)
2.ohio macedonia Macedonia, Ohio
3.ancient macedonia Macedonia (ancient kingdom)
4.greece macedonia Macedonia (Greece)
5.skopje macedonia Republic of Macedonia
6.macedonia church a baptist church in US
  • See also: "Macedonia" places (represented by cities)[4] by Google (zoom in/out,click update)

literature about antiquity

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In almost all literature & history books, "Macedonia" is used for the ancient kingdom and the word ancient is not even added in the name (examples:[5],[6],[7], [8], [9], [10], [11]) not "Macedon", not even "Ancient Macedonia" in all the above examples

  • Net usage about antiquity (lang=en)

Books & Wikipedia

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Another Google tool digs into archives to find the temporal context, i.e. the time period around various citations the word "Macedonia". They show that the Macedonia in antiquity(a big bulk of the citations) and Pre-Balkan wars Macedonia region (spike in 1912) are common uses of "Macedonia". Therefore the non-country citations are more

  • "Macedonia" timeline, Wikipedia[12]
  • "Macedonia" timeline, Google Books[13]

 

Google help: see How do you create the timelines?

Official sources

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  • Usage by neutral official parties suggest F.Y.R.O.M. term (expanded) is more common [14] (verified by Fut.Perf)[15]

Maps

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  • Usage in online interactive maps:
  • Usage in widely used maps that are issued by organizations
NATO maps, UN maps use F.Y.R.O.M (expanded)
  • Usage in printed maps, however respectable, are inconsistent affected by political decisions
    • University of Texas collection (CIA maps).George Bush 1st term:"F.Y.R.O.M."[22]. George Bush 2nd term:"Macedonia"[23].
  • Usage in printed maps
  • by major US maps publishers "Macedonia" (2), National Geographic, Rand McNalley.
  • "FYROM" (1), Hammond
  • All minor publishers use "Macedonia" (after 2003?)
(data by User:Taivo)

How Wikipedia treats other conflicts

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There is no debate on Luxembourg no name is disputed and no regional conflicts. In all other conflict areas except Azerbaijan the main page is never about a country:

Common name article what it is about: countries provinces of countries
America disambiguation page United States of America
Micronesia greater region Federated States of Micronesia, other non-federated countries
China cultural region Republic of China and People's Republic of China
Taiwan island (region) Republic of China Taiwan Province
Ireland the island (region) Republic of Ireland Northern Ireland
Korea a formerly unified... South Korea (Republic of K.) and North Korea (Democratic People's Rep. of K.)
Central Africa core region Central African Republic (similar name)
Nagorno-Karabakh landlocked region Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
Abkhazia disputed region Republic of Abkhazia redirects to disputed region
Azerbaijan a country Republic of Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (Iran)

Note that Republic of Macedonia is also partially recognized with that name. The above suggest the compromise of making Macedonia (region) main topic at Macedonia and move back Republic of Macedonia to its previous location. Reminder: there is also Macedonia (ancient kingdom)

Library of Congress

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see User:SQRT5P1D2/LOCMAC

LOC in its naming conventions uses "Macedonia (Republic)", "Macedonia (Greece)", "Macedonia (Bulgaria)" to label the works that are related to those specific contexts. The plain "Macedonia" is reserved for the region and the ancient history of the region (that includes the kingdom of Macedonia).

Google Books also uses Macedonia (Greece) and Macedonia (Republic) to disambiguate the two contexts.

General usage of the word Macedonia in geographical contexts

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For example, the Merriam-Webster's geographical dictionary has multiple occurrences of the word "Macedonia". Under numerous entries for cities, lakes, regions or any other geographic entity the word appears with various meanings. It is fairly easy to notice that Merriam-Webster uses "Republic of Macedonia" in every single occasion when referring to the modern country to disambiguate from other Macedonias. Routinely throughout the book "Macedonia" alone is used (along with "Thrace", "Thessaly" etc) either for the region of ancient Greece or the modern Greek region (link for verification:Google Books preview, query for "Macedonia", click on View all).

General usage of the word Macedonia in historical contexts

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The different meanings of "Macedonia" under varied geopolitical discussions illustrates that there is significant ambiguity of the word when used in history books. Here is a perfect example of that ambiguity in The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia:

  • Macedonia used in text under the title "Classical Greece"[24] and also in the section titled "Alexander the Great"[25]
  • Macedonia in the section titled "The Balkan Wars"[26]
  • Macedonia in the section titled "Breakup of Yugoslavia"[27]

Evidence presented by Fut.Perf.

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The name "Macedonia" is most often used to refer to the country rather than other entities

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see User:Future Perfect at Sunrise/MOSMAC2#Google searches (and subsequent section on corpus search)

This claim goes for present-day usage in common English practice across a wide range of topic domains. The Google Books results indicate that the picture is naturally different in collections of academic literature including older works.

The country is most often referred to as "Macedonia" rather than other names

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see same evidence section as above
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see User:Future Perfect at Sunrise/MOSMAC2#Page view statistics

Macedonia does not "accept" or "use" the UN appellation itself even in contexts like the EU or UN

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It is not true, as has been claimed in discussion, that the republic "formally uses the provisional reference, without referring to its constitutional name, in all of its relations with the UN and other international organizations". The country signs documents under the UN appellation only where they are authored in common with other countries, such as treaties or common declarations like the one here. However, whenever it addresses the United Nations alone, in any document authored by itself, it will invariably use the constitutional name. See multiple documents here, e.g. [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33]. Here we see the same on the bilateral level: a bilateral exchange of notes with another country that uses the UN appellation, filed with the UN registry, where the editorial frontmatter added by the UN uses the "f.Y.R." term, the other country also addresses Macedonia as "f.Y.R." in the text ("[...] presents its compliments to the Embassy of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia [...]"), but the Macedonian embassy in its own letter refers to its country as "Republic of Macedonia" throughout. In the EU, it even registers a formal objection as a matter of routine every time it is officially referred to by the UN appellation (here; multiple similar documents here).

Survey of affected page titles

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Just some statistics to provide some idea about the scope of the rules to be decided here.

There are currently 355 article pages that are part of Category:Macedonia or its subcategories (i.e. related to any of the Balkan "Macedonias") and whose page titles contain the string "Macedonia(n)".

Of these, 10 are the top-level main articles (4 competing articles about "Macedonia" as geographical/political units, 4 about "Macedonians" as ethnic groups, and 2 about "Macedonian" as a language name).

In 135 pages, the term "Macedonia" is part of a larger proper name, and as such not subject to disambiguating modifications.

The remaining 210 pages are "sub-articles" in the sense to be covered by this guideline.

They are distributed as follows:

  • 5 articles dealing with the ancient kingdom
  • 4 articles dealing with the geographical region
  • 3 articles dealing with Greek M.
  • 19 articles dealing with the modern Macedonian language
  • 29 articles dealing with (Slavic) Macedonians as an ethnic group
  • 112 articles dealing with the country
  • 38 articles where the name of the country is itself used as a disambiguating qualifier (e.g. placenames of the format "X, Macedonia")

Among the latter two groups (i.e. titles referring to the country), the current naming practices are as follows:

Of the pages that use a complex term for the country ("Republic of" or some variant of "f.Y..."), 42 already have a redirect from the simple page title using plain "M."

Of the 210 articles, only 8 belong to sets of directly competing names that need disambiguation from each other (such as Flag of the Republic of Macedonia vs. Flag of Macedonia (Greece)).

This is true even though there are as many as 29 Macedonia-related disambiguation pages, in addition to the 2 main ones. But most of these deal with ambiguities that aren't primarily due to the ambiguity of "M." itself, and of the remaining ones, many entries don't actually go to matching articles but to redirects or section links of quite differently named articles.

Lists of pages

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Extended content
Pages at disambiguated title but with redirect from simple title
Target page Simple redirect other redirects
Accession of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the European Union Accession of Macedonia to the European Union, Macedonian accession to the European Union Accession of FYROM to EU, Accession of Republic of Macedonia to the European Union, Accession of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the European Union, Accession of the Macedonia to the European Union, Accession of the Republic of Macedonia to the European Union, Accession of the republic of Macedonia to the European Union, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the European Union, Republic of Macedonia and the European Union
Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia Albanian Macedonians, Albanians in Macedonia Albanians in FYROM, Albanians in Republic of Macedonia, Albanians of the Republic of Macedonia
Cinema of the Republic of Macedonia Cinema of Macedonia
Coat of arms of the Republic of Macedonia Coat of arms of Macedonia Coat of Arms of the Republic of Macedonia, Coat of arms of Macedonia (country), Coat of arms of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, Coats of arms of the Republic of Macedonia, Macedonian coat of arms, Macedonian coats of arms
Economy of the Republic of Macedonia Economy of Macedonia Economy of FYR Macedonia, Economy of Republic of Macedonia, Economy of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Economy of the Former Yugoslavic Republic of Macedonia, Economy of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Economy of the republic of macedonia, Macedonia/Economy
Elections in the Republic of Macedonia Elections in Macedonia Elections in Republic of Macedonia, Elections in the republic of macedonia
Embassy of the Republic of Macedonia in Washington, D.C. Embassy of Macedonia in Washington, D.C.
F.Y.R. Macedonia Davis Cup team Macedonia Davis Cup team F Y R Macedonia Davis Cup team, F. Y. R. Macedonia Davis Cup team, FYR Macedonia Davis Cup team
F.Y.R. Macedonia Fed Cup team Macedonia Fed Cup team F Y R Macedonia Fed Cup team, F. Y. R. Macedonia Fed Cup team, FYR Macedonia Fed Cup team
F.Y.R. Macedonia in the Eurovision Song Contest Macedonia in eurovision, Macedonia in the Eurovision Song Contest F Y R Macedonia in the Eurovision Song Contest, F. Y. R. Macedonia in the Eurovision Song Contest, FYR Macedonia in the Eurovision Song Contest, FYR of Macedonia in the Eurovision Song Contest, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in the Eurovision Song Contest, Republic of Macedonia in the Eurovision Song Contest
F.Y.R. Macedonia in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest Macedonia in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest FYR Macedonia in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, Former yugoslav republic of macedonia in the junior eurovision song contest, Republic of Macedonia in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest
FYR Macedonia at the 1996 Summer Olympics Macedonia at the 1996 Summer Olympics Republic of Macedonia at the 1996 Summer Olympics
FYR Macedonia at the 1998 Winter Olympics Macedonia at the 1998 Winter Olympics
FYR Macedonia at the 2002 Winter Olympics Macedonia at the 2002 Winter Olympics
FYR Macedonia at the Olympics Macedonia at the Olympics
Foreign relations of the Republic of Macedonia Foreign relations of Macedonia Foreign relations of FYR Macedonia, , Foreign relations of Republic of Macedonia, Foreign relations of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Foreign relations of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Foreign relations of the republic of macedonia, Macedonia/Transnational issues, Naming dispute over Macedonian ethnicity
Greek investments in the Republic of Macedonia Greek investments in Macedonia
Hinduism in the Republic of Macedonia Hinduism in Macedonia
Human rights in the Republic of Macedonia Human rights in Macedonia Human rights in the republic of macedonia
Islam in the Republic of Macedonia Islam in Macedonia Islam in FYR Macedonia
LGBT rights in the Republic of Macedonia Gay Rights in Macedonia, Gay rights in Macedonia Gay rights in the Republic of Macedonia, LGBT rights in Macedonia, Recognition of same-sex unions in the Republic of Macedonia
Liberalism in the Republic of Macedonia Liberalism in Macedonia, Timeline of liberal parties in Macedonia
List of Macedonian submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film List of Macedonian submissions for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
List of dialing codes in the Republic of Macedonia List of Dialing codes in Macedonia +389, List of Dialing codes in the Republic of Macedonia, List of Dialing codes in thr Republic of Macedonia
List of diplomatic missions in the Republic of Macedonia List of diplomatic missions in Macedonia
List of diplomatic missions of the Republic of Macedonia Diplomatic missions of Macedonia Diplomatic missions of Republic of Macedonia, Diplomatic missions of macedonia, Diplomatic missions of the Republic of Macedonia, Macedonian diplomatic missions, Republic of Macedonia diplomatic missions
List of municipalities in the Republic of Macedonia by population List of municipalities in Macedonia by population
List of newspapers in the Republic of Macedonia List of newspapers in Macedonia, Macedonian newspapers, Newspapers in Macedonia
List of radio stations in the Republic of Macedonia List of radio stations in Macedonia
List of tallest buildings in the Republic of Macedonia List of tallest buildings in Macedonia, List of tallest buildings in macedonia
Military of the Republic of Macedonia Military of Macedonia, Air Force of Macedonia, Army of Macedonia Army of the Republic of Macedonia, Macedonia/Military, Macedonian Armed Forces, Macedonian military ranks, Military of Republic of Macedonia, Military of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia Municipalities of Macedonia Teritorial organistaion of the Local Self-government of the Republic of Macedonia, Territorial Organisation of the Local Self-government of the Republic of Macedonia, Territorial Organization of the Local Self-government of the Republic of Macedonia
Republic of Macedonia national basketball team Macedonia national basketball team, Macedonian national basketball team FYR Macedonia national basketball team
President of the Republic of Macedonia President of Macedonia President of PR Macedonia, President of SR Macedonia, President of the People's Assembly of PR Macedonia, President of the republic of macedonia
Prime Minister of the Republic of Macedonia Prime Minister of Macedonia List of Prime Ministers of the Republic of Macedonia, President of the Executive Council of PR Macedonia, Prime Minister of PR Macedonia, Prime Minister of SR Macedonia, Prime Minister of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Prime minister of the former yugoslav republic of macedonia
Protestantism in the Republic of Macedonia Protestants in Macedonia
Republic of Macedonia Ministry of Internal Affairs Ministry of Internal Affairs of Macedonia Ministry of Internal affairs of FYR Macedonia
Republic of Macedonia national football team Macedonia national football team FYR Macedonia national football team, FYROM national football team, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia national football team, The Republic of Macedonia national football team
Serbs in the Republic of Macedonia Serbs in Macedonia, Serbs of Macedonia, Serbian-Macedonian Serbs of the Republic of Macedonia, Serbs of the republic of macedonia
Turks in the Republic of Macedonia Turks in Macedonia Turks in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Vehicle registration plates of the Republic of Macedonia Macedonian car number plates, Vehicle registration plates of Macedonia Car number plates in the Republic of Macedonia, License plates of the Republic of Macedonia


Pages with other disambiguation pattern
Target page description redirects
Cuisine of the Republic of Macedonia (dab page) Ethnic Macedonian cuisine, Macedonian cuisine (Republic of Macedonia), Macedonian cuisine (Slavic)
Demographic history of the Republic of Macedonia (dab page)
Flag of the Republic of Macedonia (dab page) Flag of FYR Macedonia, Flag of Macedonia (country), Flag of Republic of Macedonia, Flag of the republic of macedonia
Greeks in the Republic of Macedonia (dab page) GREEK MINORITY IN FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA, Greek Minority in Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Greek Minority of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Greek minority in the Republic of Macedonia
Music of the Republic of Macedonia (dab page) Ethnic Macedonian Music, Ethnic Macedonian music, Ethnic macedonian music, Music of FYROM, Music of Republic of Macedonia, Music of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Music of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Music scene of Republic of Macedonia
Demographics of the Republic of Macedonia (simple title redirects elsewhere) Demographics of Macedonia (country), Demographics of Republic of Macedonia, Demographics of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Demographics of the republic of macedonia, Ethnic groups in the Republic of Macedonia, Macedonia/People
Pages using only "Republic of M."
Target page redirects
Architecture of the Republic of Macedonia
Aromanians in the Republic of Macedonia Aromanians of the Republic of Macedonia
Bulgarians in the Republic of Macedonia
Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia
Croats of the Republic of Macedonia
E75 in Republic of Macedonia
Education in the Republic of Macedonia
Flags of the Republic of Macedonia
History of the Jews in the Republic of Macedonia History of the jews in the republic of macedonia, Jews in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Jews in the Republic of Macedonia, Judaism in the Republic of Macedonia
Languages of the Republic of Macedonia Languages in the Republic of Macedonia
Law enforcement in the Republic of Macedonia Republic Of Macedonia Police
List of Speakers of the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia
List of banks in the Republic of Macedonia
List of cities in the Republic of Macedonia by population
List of football clubs in the Republic of Macedonia
List of islands of the Republic of Macedonia
List of rivers of the Republic of Macedonia List of rivers in the Republic of Macedonia, Rivers in the Republic of Macedonia, Rivers of the Republic of Macedonia
List of twin towns and sister cities in the Republic of Macedonia List of twin towns and sister cities in Republic of Macedonia
List of volcanoes in the Republic of Macedonia List of volcanoes in Republic of Macedonia
Military history of the Republic of Macedonia Occupation of Vardar Macedonia during World War II, Occupation of Yugoslav Macedonia during World War II
National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia Makedonska Banka, NBRM, National bank of the Republic of Macedonia, National bank of the republic of macedonia
National Motorways of the Republic of Macedonia Avtopat
Public holidays in the Republic of Macedonia Public holidays of the Republic of Macedonia
Religion in the Republic of Macedonia
Republic of Macedonia men's national volleyball team
Republic of Macedonia men's national water polo team Republic of Macedonia national water polo team
Republic of Macedonia national handball team
Republic of Macedonia national ice hockey team Republic of Macedonia men's national ice hockey team
Republic of Macedonia national under-21 football team
Republic of Macedonia women's national football team
Republic of Macedonia women's national handball team FYR Macedonia women's national handball team
Republic of Macedonia – United States relations
Roma in the Republic of Macedonia
Roman Catholicism in the Republic of Macedonia Roman Catholicism in FYR Macedonia
Union of the Baptist Christians in the Republic of Macedonia
Pages using plain "M."
Target page redirects
Accession of Macedonia to NATO
Kosovan–Macedonian relations
List of Ambassadors from the United Kingdom to Macedonia
Macedonia police
Macedonian Air Force Air Force of the Republic of Macedonia
Macedonian Footballer of the Year
Macedonian Prva Liga First League of Republic of Macedonia, First League of the Republic of Macedonia, Macedonian Champions, Macedonian First League, Macedonian Premier League (football), Macedonian first league, Makedonska 1. Liga, Makedonska Prva Liga
Macedonian Prva Liga (basketball) Macedonian Premier League (basketball), Macedonian superleague
Macedonian Prva Liga 2006-07 Macedonian First League 2006-07, Macedonian Premier League 2006-07
Macedonian Prva Liga 2007-08 First League of Republic of Macedonia 2007-08, First League of the Republic of Macedonia 2007-08, Macedonian First League 2007-08, Macedonian Premier League 2007-08, Makedonska Prva Liga 2007-08
Macedonian Prva Liga 2008–09
Macedonian Prva Liga 2009–10
Macedonian Stock Exchange Macedonia Stock Exchange, Makedonska Berza, Skopje Stock Exchange
Macedonian Treta Liga Macedonian Third League
Macedonian Vtora Liga Macedonian Second League
Macedonian Vtora Liga 2008–09
Macedonian autonomy referendum, 2004 Republic of Macedonia autonomy referendum, 2004
Macedonian denar Denar, F.Y.Republic of Macedonia denar, FYROM - Denar, FYROM - denar, FYROM Denar, FYROM denar, Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia Denar, Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia denar, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia - Denar, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia Denar, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia denar, MKN, Macedonian Denar
Macedonian electoral units Macedonian electoral Units
Macedonian identity card Macedonian ID, Macedonian ID card
Macedonian independence referendum, 1991
Macedonian parliamentary election, 1998 Macedonian parliamentary election of 1998, Republic of Macedonia parliamentary election, 1998
Macedonian parliamentary election, 2002 Republic of Macedonia parliamentary election, 2002
Macedonian parliamentary election, 2006 Repbulic of Macedonia parliamentary election, 2006, Republic of Macedonia parliamentary election, 2006
Macedonian parliamentary election, 2008 2008 Macedonian elections, 2008 parliamentary election in the Republic of Macedonia, Republic of Macedonia parliamentary election, 2008
Macedonian passport Macedonian citizenship
Macedonian presidential election, 2004 2004 presidential election in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, 2004 presidential election in the Republic of Macedonia, Republic of Macedonia presidential election, 2004
Macedonian presidential election, 2009 Presidential Election in the Republic of Macedonia, 2009
Macedonian–Serbian relations
Macedonian–Turkish relations
Macedonia–Slovenia relations

Evidence presented by Radjenef

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Evidence copied from MACEDONIA2 Arbitration

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The term "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" is the one most commonly used by international organizations as evidenced by:

UN [34] EU [35], NATO [36], WTO [37], IMF [38], WHO [39], ICC [40], Council of Europe [41], WIPO [42], WMO [43], IOM [44], Interpol [45].

Google search also verifies this result:

Google search Hits Link
"former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" 1,480,000 [46]
"Republic of Macedonia" -"former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" 821,000 [47]

Most recent data as of --Radjenef (talk) 10:33, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Self-identification

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The Republic self-identifies in two ways. One is de jure self-identification, whereby according to the Republic's constitution it is called "Republic of Macedonia". The other is de facto self-identification, whereby the Republic signs official UN documents as "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" (i.e. [48]). The Republic's current President, Gjorge Ivanov, has mentioned that his country's UN appellation constitutes a name [49]: "So we were forced to take the name "FYROM" (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)". While it has been argued by other users that the Republic uses its constitutional name in the context of the UN, the evidence that were provided were mostly bilateral correspondence (letters between countries) and speeches, not actual formal UN documents. Also, while it may be true that the Republic sometimes "protests" when its constitutional name is not used within the context of the EU, its EU candidacy is under the UN provisional reference. If that were not the case, then the Republic would have been acting in violation of the 1995 interim accord and Greece would be allowed to veto the membership. That is clearly not the case here. To sum up, self-identification is a fuzzy area because the Republic doesn't always use the same way of identifying itself. The term of plain "Macedonia" does not appear to be a formal name of the Republic.

On the status-quo

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The current state of the Republic's article was brought about due to some edits that were made prior to ARBMAC2 [50]. The user who made them was sanctioned by ArbCom as a result of those edits [51],[52]. Ever since, as the result of an ArbCom injunction, the article's name has been locked until after the community comes to a solution for the naming dispute [53]. Note that this doesn't imply an endorsement of the status-quo in any way. In fact, the longest standing "status quo" (even though it was not a consensus) was the one described in [54].

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In most of the existing academic literature as well as in older English usage, the name is more often used in other meanings, especially that of the ancient kingdom [55]. To be more precise, I have broken up the search into two time periods: up until 1995 and from 1995 onwards.

Articles up until 1995

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The link for searching for all articles mentioning the word "Macedonia", limiting the results to only those articles published up until 1995 is [56], yielding a total of 10612 articles. Roughly checking the first 50 results, yielded 6 articles that used the word "Macedonia" to refer to either the Republic or the former Yugoslavian Province: [57], [58], [59], [60], [61], [62].

Articles from 1995 onwards

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The link for searching for all articles mentioning the word "Macedonia", limiting the results to only those articles published from 1995 onwards is [63], yielding a total of 3245 articles. Roughly checking the first 50 results, yielded 22 articles that used the word "Macedonia" to refer to the Republic: [64], [65], [66], [67], [68], [69], [70], [71], [72], [73], [74], [75], [76], [77], [78], [79], [80], [81], [82], [83], [84], [85].

Even though these 22 articles do use the word "Macedonia" while referring to the Republic, it should be noted that some of them refer to it as "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" (yes, with a capital "F").

Response to criticism of evidence

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The results having to do with Joseph Macedonia are 7, not 5. That doesn't mean that these articles should not be counted, it simply means that J.M. Macedonia is one of the meanings of the term. Out of the three references Taivo mentioned for the country, I can confirm that one of them was a miscount on my part, so that makes 23. The other two, weren't in my listing of the first 50 references, though it could be the case that JSTOR moves things around quite often. In any case, if you look at the way I've used the JSTOR evidence, you'll see that I have only used it to prove that the country is not the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. The evidence clearly shows that the country is not "much more used" than the other topics.

Other evidence

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Evidence in favour of "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia"

Evidence presented by Grnch

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Britannica uses "Macedonia" to refer to the country

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This is counter-evidence to the claims about Britannica by Shadowmorph above.

If you search for "Macedonia" on the online version of Britannica, you are presented with a list of articles containing "Macedonia" somewhere in the title, such as:

Note: this listing of results is in no way specific to searches for Macedonia, it does the exact same thing if you search for Germany, France, etc. It's not the same as a disambiguation page in Wikipedia.

Main observation here is that Britannica uses just "Macedonia" to refer to the country. It adds additional parenthesised qualifiers for the other meanings. If there was any ambiguity as to what the single word "Macedonia" refers to in a general context, one would think that they would have also clarified the country article with "Macedonia (country, Europe)" or something similar, but they have not.

Regarding the actual text of the articles, if you click on any of the search results above you will see that Britannica puts the parenthesised qualifier in a subtitle on the article page (except of course for the "Macedonia" article where there is no such qualifier, hence no subtitle).

For example, the article Macedonia (region, Europe) begins with:

Macedonia
region, Europe
Bulgarian Makedoniya, Modern Greek Makedhonía, Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian Makedonija
... etc.

There is the main title, the subtitle "region, Europe", and list of alternate/local names.

Compare this with the article for Macedonia, which begins with:

Macedonia
Macedonian Makedonija, officially Republic of Macedonia, Macedonian Republika Makedonija
... etc.

As you can see, there is the main title and the alternate/local names, but no subtitle this time.

Wikipedia's status quo is in fact consistent with Britannica, i.e. it uses plain unadorned "Macedonia" to refer to the country, and additional qualifiers for the other meanings. Therefore, Britannica cannot be used as an argument against the status quo, i.e. that "Macedonia" alone should stop referring to the country.

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Place argument and links which support the second assertion.

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