Aegean Macedonians - Ethnic and Linguistic Affiliations

Ethnic and Linguistic Affiliations

Members of this group have had a number of conflicting ethnic identifications.

Predominantly identified as Macedonian Bulgarians until the early 1940s, since the formation of a Macedonian nation state, many of the migrant population in the diaspora (Australia, United States and Canada) have a strong Macedonian identity and have followed the consolidation of the Macedonian ethnicity.

However, those who remain in Greece, now mainly identify nationally as ethnic Greeks, although, it should be noted, that though the Macedonian region is overwhelmingly inhabited by Greeks including descendants of Pontians, it is ethnically diverse (including Albanians, Aromanians and Slavs).

The second group in today's Greece is made up of those who seem to reject any national identity, but have distinct regional ethnic identity, which they may call “indigenous” - dopia -, Slavomacedonian, or Macedonian, and the smallest group is made up of those who have a clear ethnic Macedonian national identity. They speak East South Slavic dialects that can be linguistically classified as either Macedonian or Bulgarian, but which are locally often referred to simply as "Slavic" or "the local language". Nowadays the people still living in Greece are bilingual.

A crucial element of that controversy is the very name Macedonian, as it is also used by a much more numerous group of people with a Greek national identity to indicate their regional identity. The term "Aegean Macedonians" (Macedonian: Егејски Македонци, Egejski Makedonci) is associated with those parts of the population that have an ethnic Macedonian identity. Speakers who identify as Greeks or have distinct regional ethnic identity, often speak of themselves simply as "locals" (Greek: Dopii), to distinguish themselves from native Greek speakers from the rest of Greece and Greek refugees from Asia Minor who entered the area in the 1920s and after.

Slavic speakers will also use the term "Macedonians" or "Slavomacedonians", though in a regional rather than an ethnic sense. People of Greek persuasion are sometimes called by the pejorative term "Grecomans" by the other side. Greek sources, which usually avoid the identification of the group with the nation of the Republic of Macedonia, and also reject the use of the name "Macedonian" for the latter, will most often refer only to so called "Slavophones" or "Slavophone Greeks".

"Slavic-speakers" or "Slavophones" is also used as a cover term for people across the different ethnic orientations. The exact number of the linguistic minority remaining in Greece today, together with its members' choice of ethnic identification, is difficult to ascertain; most maximum estimates range around 180,000-200,000 with those of an ethnic Macedonian national consciousness numbering possibly 10,000 to 30,000. However, as per leading experts on this issue, the number of this people has decreased in the last decades, because of the intermeriages and the urbanization and they number nowadays between 50,000 and 70,000 people with around 10,000 of them identifying as Macedonians.