Macedonia
Same thing, new accepted name.
TaughtMacedonia, a small country north of Greece, formerly part of Yugoslavia.
NowIt became the Republic of North Macedonia in February 2019 under the Prespa Agreement with Greece, ending a naming dispute that had run for 27 years.
What actually happened
Greece objected to the name from the moment the country declared independence in 1991, on the grounds that Macedonia is the name of a Greek region and that the claim implied territorial ambitions on it. The dispute was not symbolic: Greece blocked the country's NATO and EU accession over it for decades, and the UN admitted it in 1993 under the provisional name "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia," abbreviated FYROM, one of the clumsiest entries ever to appear on a UN roster.
The Prespa Agreement of 2018 resolved it. Macedonia became North Macedonia, changed its constitution, and Greece dropped its objections; the country joined NATO in 2020. The referendum on the deal actually failed to reach the required turnout threshold, and parliament passed it anyway, which tells you how contentious it was domestically. Prime ministers on both sides paid a political price.
Newsletter
Get new weekly revisions
Sources
- United Nations: Member statesun.org
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: North Macedoniabritannica.com
Who was taught this
Still standard through 2019, so anyone who finished school between 1950 and 2019 learned the earlier version.