[eftychis]

The consensus of historians is pretty clear on the subject though. However, if now a layman considers "We can't even be sure that the Greeks, at the time of Philip & Alexander" shows the extent of the damage this light "stupid" naming situation has caused. Would you consider Spartans or Athenians or people of Thebes not to be Greeks?

>>This is like insisting that what gay "really" means is happy. It's neither true or false statement. It's nonsensical.

Yes, that word has been overloaded with multiple meanings. Yet your example is perfect as it shows that people care how you call them and how you refer to them. If I go and define gay as something else, people referring themselves as gay probably will not appreciate my renaming. If I change the meaning of the terms U.S. citizen, British etc people would not take it lightly either.

Now consider you do that for a race, that is proud for its past for at least the last circa 2000 years. And it is done in a form of bullying. Recall this whole naming situation started during the Cold War and Greece was blackmailed to "keep in line" for the greater good. Recall USSR and the rest of the allies were both imagining their world. USSR's gift to Tito to side with them encompassed all of Northern Greece and Bulgaria, and that was his aspiration.

Consider a Greek, especially one in Macedonia; they are proud of their ancestors and have seen a lot of bullying from a financial and political perspective being applied on them the last few years. Now the same outsiders come in and say that while we settled on a U.N. name originally, we did not really used it and you have to find a compromise and make it work, whatever the cost for Greece. I am sorry, but historically silly issues like this have backfired for the area and Greece. Let us hope there is no war over this (if you think people would not fight over this area see WWI, Balkan Wars, and WWII atrocities; Cold War was not that cold in that area; the Yugoslavia war (90s) was over identity).