in the past there was no such nation as germany it consisted of literally hundreds of states some kingdoms some duchies some simply a city over the centuries these states fought against each other allied with each other and even absorbed each other each state was a proper country and so such names as brandenburg saxony hanover etc defined national groupsm and cultures it wasn't until that gertmany became one country and even then some regions eg austria weren't invluded since terms like hanoverian and bavarian no longer refer to national identities because they're all just german or deutsch however if a foreign non german people were to suddenly use the name of say 'bavaria' as their national identity and call their non german language and culture bavarian all germans would take offense to it this is something of a no brainer in exactly the same way there used to be literally hundreds of separate greek nations varying greatly in size power culture and other things they fought both with and against eaxh other today however there is a single greek state which does not include all the historical greek lands however if a foreign non greek people were to try and appropriate a regional name that is indisputably greek like with nacedonia it will understandably anger all greeks because macedonia was one of those hundreds of greek regional states what's more today more than per cent of macedon proper is within the greek boundaries and not fyrom's boundaries so thus fyrom has no legitimate claim to use the name macedonia except to describe its southern regions like bitola and ochrid sp in a historical context kurt stein