Macedonian surnames are the surnames which are held by people in the country of North Macedonia today and people of Macedonian descent in surrounding regions like northern Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. Macedonian surnames do not follow one specific ethnic-lingual tradition, reflecting the country’s position on the crossroads of different polities and empires in the Balkans throughout history. Many are of Greek origin, though others reflect Slavic influences from further north in the Balkans.
History of Macedonian surnames
The landscape of Macedonian surnames reflects the country’s historical position in the Balkans. The country known today as North Macedonia lies at a crossroads of the southern Balkans. One had to typically pass through the region to head south into northern Greece and then the Peloponnese from places like Serbia, or vice-versa if a person is travelling north to the greater Balkans region in Bulgaria, Serbia and other countries. Also, for anyone who had travelled over the Bosporus from Anatolia (modern-day western Turkey) to Europe, they often need to proceed through Macedonia to get to the Adriatic and other places like Albania and Montenegro.[1]
In line with this, various peoples have passed through Macedonia during military campaigns as far back as the Persian invasion of Greece in the fifth century BCE. As they have done so, people as diverse as the ancient Greeks themselves, the Slavs, the Bulgarsand the Turks have all left their imprint on the lingual, cultural and thus surname landscape of North Macedonia. However, owing to developments in more recent centuries, specifically the fact that what is now North Macedonia constituted one of the six republics that made up Yugoslavia for most of the twentieth century, the surnames which dominate in the country of North Macedonia are Slavic in nature and are quite similar to Serbian surnames or Bulgarian surnames.[2]
This differs somewhat if we take into account ‘historic’ Macedonia, a region which not only covers North Macedonia, but also a large proportion of northern Greece. Here one will find many people who might well identify as being ‘Macedonian’ and whose surnames are more Greek in nature than their Slavic surname brethren to the north in the actual country of North Macedonia. In short, Macedonian surnames have been impacted on by many centuries of Balkan history and continue to be so through political developments in the region today.
Macedonian naming conventions
The Macedonian surnames which predominate in North Macedonia itself are Slavic in nature for the most part. Thus, one will come across an awful lot of individuals whose surnames end in suffixes like ‘-ovski’ and ‘-ovska’, essentially meaning ‘son of’ and ‘daughter of’. Consequently, a great many Macedonian surnames are patronymic in nature, indicating a line of male lineal descent from ancestors several hundred years ago.
A smaller number of people in North Macedonia carry surnames which are of a more Turkic, Albanian or Greek conventional style. This is especially the case amongst ethnic Macedonians who live beyond the border of North Macedonia in parts of Greece and the like. Yet the naming conventions within North Macedonia itself wholly reflect the country’s position as a former constituent part of Yugoslavia.[3]
Most popular Macedonian surnames
The most popular surnames in the country of North Macedonia today are resoundingly Slavic in their construction and reflect the country’s truncated nature. They are as follows:
- Stojanovski – The most common surname in North Macedonia, with over roughly 11,000 of the country’s two million people having this. The name essentially means ‘son of Stojan’.
- Jovanovska – The second most widespread surname, essentially meaning ‘daughter of Jovan’.
- Jovanovski – The third most common surname in the country.
- Stojanovska – The fourth most common surname in the country.
The process continues as one progresses down the list. Hence Nikolovska and Nikolovski, meaning ‘daughter of Nikol’ and ‘son of Nikol’ are the fifth and sixth most common surnames, also reflecting the prominence of Saint Nicholas within the Greek Orthodox tradition in the Balkans and the popularity of Nikol or Nicholas as a given name as a result.[4]
One thing that should be borne in mind, though, when assessing these Macedonian surnames, is that people who can be deemed to be of a Macedonian ethnic background do not live exclusively in North Macedonia. A highly contentious political issue is that much of what is now northern Greece, in provinces such as Kilkis, Thessaloniki, Imathia and Edessa, is populated by people of Macedonian heritage. These Macedonians will tend to have more Greek-derived surnames and the most common surnames in a province such as Thessaloniki are Papageorgiou, Pappas and Papadimitriou. Given all this, the very issue of Macedonian surnames is a politically contentious one in modern times, something which was reflected in the country name dispute which ran for 27 years between the two nations between 1991 and the late 2010s before Macedonian agreed to change its name to North Macedonia as a concession to Greece in order to further Macedonian accession talks with the European Union.[5]
Famous people with Macedonian surnames
- Dimitrije Bužarovski – Hailing from the North Macedonian capital, Skopje, Bužarovski is a composer, academic and polymath scholar, one with a Macedonian surname of the Slavic variety.[6]
- Bleta ‘Bebe’ Rexha – She was born in Brooklyn in New York City, though her family traces its roots back to North Macedonia. Her surname belongs to the Macedonian surnames found in the Albanian-Macedonian community.[7]
- Darko Pančev – A footballer from Skopje. In 1991 he won the European Golden Boot, the same year his side, Red Star Belgrade, won the European Cup in a time when minnows from the Balkans could still win such prestigious tournaments. His surname is again a Macedonian one of Slavic derivation.[8]
- Vesna Stojanovska – A two time Olympic swimmer, one from Skopje and having one of the most common Macedonian surnames of all.[9]
See also
- North Macedonia
- Slavic surnames
- Bulgarian surnames
- Greek surnames
- Czech surnames
- Polish surnames
- Turkish surnames
- Serbian surnames
- Bosnian surnames
- Croatian surnames
- Slovene surnames
- Albanian surnames
- Rusyn surnames
- Silesian surnames
- Hungarian surnames
- Medieval surnames
- French surnames
- German surnames
- Ashkenazi Jewish surnames
- Sephardic Jewish surnames
- Macedonian Jewish surnames
Explore more about Macedonian surnames
- Macedonian Culture at Cultural Atlas
- Macedonian Name Database at Name Census
- Macedonia at History
References
- ↑ Macedonian Cultural Plurality at the Crossroads of the Balkans: Drama, Music and Dance
- ↑ North Macedonia
- ↑ Macedonian Culture. SBS Cultural Atlas
- ↑ Macedonian Surnames Macedonian Surnames
- ↑ Macedonia and Greece: How they solved a 27-year name row. BBC
- ↑ Buzarovski Archive
- ↑ Why Albanian Artists Are Having a Moment On the Charts. Billboard
- ↑ 'I could have gone to Barcelona': Former Golden Boot winner Darko Pancev rues move to Inter Milan
- ↑ Vesna Stojanovska. Olympedia