Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:24, 11 May 2007

These guidelines deal with the naming of articles related to the Republic of Macedonia. Please follow the conventions below. If you disagree with any of the conventions, please discuss in the talk page.

To write and edit Republic of Macedonia-related articles, please follow the conventions below. Note

• see Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style for general cases
• see Misplaced Pages:History for notes on the style of history articles
• see Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (use English) for general use of English names in articles.

Country naming issues

Background

The Republic of Macedonia is a country in south-eastern Europe, situated between Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia. Since gaining independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, it has been embroiled in a dispute with Greece concerning its use of the name Macedonia, which is also the name of a northern region of Greece. The dispute remains unresolved, but three names for the republic are in general use in English-language sources:

• Republic of Macedonia - used by the country itself, plus about half of the UN's member states, including the US, Russia and China;
• former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia - used by the United Nations and about half of its member states, plus the European Union (including Greece) and many other international organisations.
• Macedonia (without any modifiers) - widely used by English-language news media

A number of other variant names are also in use:

• FYROM
• FYRO Macedonia
• FYR of Macedonia
• FYR Macedonia
• FY Republic of Macedonia

In addition, Greek nationalists have also coined several alternative names in rejection of any use of the term "Macedonia" by any country other than Greece. These names are not in general use but will tend to be used by some supporters of a Greek nationalist point of view:

• Republic of Skopje
• Republic of Vardar

These multiple overlapping names are often a cause of confusion on the part of:

• Misplaced Pages's editors, who may be uncertain about which name to use;
• Misplaced Pages's readers, who may not understand what the name means (e.g. if the acronym "FYROM" is used without spelling it out) or which Macedonia — the country or the Greek region — is being referred to.

To reduce the scope for confusion and promote consistency across Misplaced Pages articles, this page sets out conventions for describing the Republic of Macedonia.

Misplaced Pages standards

Misplaced Pages's approach to dealing with disputed placenames is set out in Misplaced Pages:Naming conflict. The naming conflict guidelines operate alongside the guidelines on general naming conventions and naming conventions for common names.

Naming standards set by external organisations are not automatically applicable to Misplaced Pages. For instance, the UN and most international organisations recognise the Republic of China (i.e. Taiwan) as Chinese Taipei. Misplaced Pages's naming conflict guidelines mandate that articles on self-identifying entities should use the name, or an English translation thereof, chosen by the entity in question. ("Misplaced Pages does not take any position on whether a self-identifying entity has any right to use a name; this encyclopedia merely notes the fact that they do use that name.") Therefore the fact that the UN, the EU or any individual country uses a particular name does not require Misplaced Pages to use the same name.

Naming conventions

• The name Macedonia (used by itself without modifiers) should not be used to refer to the country, due to the need to differentiate between the country and the Greek region.

• The name Republic of Macedonia is the established term that Misplaced Pages generally uses to refer to the country, as determined by the naming conflict guidelines. The country-level article is at Republic of Macedonia and all sub-level articles also use "Republic of Macedonia", as do the related templates. This name should be used in all articles other than the exceptions set out below.

• The name former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia should be used in articles about international organisations, where the organisation in question uses that name, and in articles about modern Greece, which also uses that name for official business. Note that the initial "f" in "former" should not be capitalised unless it occurs at the start of a sentence.

• The name FYR Macedonia should be used in articles about international organisations, where the organisation in question uses that name.

• The name FYROM should be avoided for general use, except in articles which already use "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" or "FYR Macedonia". In such cases, the first use of "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" or "FYR Macedonia" should always be followed by "(FYROM)" if the abbreviated term is to be used later in the article. See Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style#Acronyms and abbreviations.

Deprecated names

The following names are deprecated:

• Republic of Skopje and Republic of Vardar should never be used for general purposes. Neither name is widely recognised and their use is exclusively associated with a particular nationalist point of view. Misplaced Pages's neutral point of view policy must be borne in mind.

• FYRO Macedonia, FYR of Macedonia and FY Republic of Macedonia are non-standard variants of "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" / "FYROM" and should not be used. Instances of these terms should be replaced by "Republic of Macedonia", "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" or "FYR Macedonia" as appropriate to the circumstances described in the section above.

Wikilinking

All wikilinks to the country should point to Republic of Macedonia. Use a pipe (the | symbol) to direct a wikilink at this article, e.g.:

]

Footnotes

1. e.g. the European Union, NATO, the United Nations.
2. e.g. Eurovision, International Olympic Committee, UEFA.