eng: FYROM & the name issue of "MACEDONIA"

Letter sent to The Economist, 4-4-09

Dear Sir,

With ref. to your article on 2nd April "The name game" please allow a Swiss citizen to take part in the debate. The real issue with FYROM is not the "name" of the rose. It is the danger arising from the "name" of the thorns. The "antiquomania" of Mr Gruefsky goes as far as to claim that the Greek part of the district of Macedonia is under Greek "occupation" and the frontier of his state he hopes to "liberate" arrives as far as the Mount Olympus and Chalcidice peninsula. Besides, the language spoken by his compatriots (other than the Albanians) is not "Macedonian". It is a Slav vernacular of Bulgarian. The language spoken in Greek Macedonia, modern, Byzantine and ancient alike, was and is Greek as it is proven by St Paul's letters to The "Thessalonikians". The language of Philip and of Alexander (as the etymology of their name indicates) was Greek. The monument Alexander erected to mark his victory at Granikos had the inscription "all Greeks except Lacedaemonians". The name "Macedonian" comes from "makednos" (tall) which is a Greek word. Any scholar knows that the Greek language (then and now) is slightly differentiated in certain districts by sparse local idioms (Attic, Ionian, Dorian, Lacaedemonian, Boeotian, Macedonian) in same manner as the English language is differentiated in various parts of England and even of London! Let us call things with their name and persuade Mr Gruefsky that the instability in the region that his "antiquomania" involves is potentially fatal not so much for Greece but for his own country!

Sincerely, Dr Nicolas Kaloy,