Macedonia (Greece)

Macedonia, also known as Greek Macedonia or Makedonia, is a geographic and former administrative region in the southern Balkans that belongs to Greece. It is the largest geographic region in the country, with a population of about 2.36 million as of 2020. Part of Northern Greece, the area is highly mountainous, though its major urban centers—Thessaloniki, Katerini, and Kavala—are located along the southern coastline. Greek Macedonia makes up 51% of the wider region of Macedonia and forms Greece’s borders with three countries: Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia to the north, and Bulgaria to the northeast.

The region covers most of the territory of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon, ruled by the Argead dynasty, whose most famous members were Alexander the Great and his father Philip II. Before Philip’s expansion in the 4th century BC, the Macedonian kingdom roughly corresponded to what are now the Greek administrative regions of Western and Central Macedonia. Over time, the name Macedonia was applied to various administrative areas in the Roman and Byzantine empires. After the Ottoman conquest of southeastern Europe in the late 14th century, the name disappeared as an administrative term for centuries and rarely appeared on maps. With the rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire, the name was revived in the 19th century as a geographical term; for educated Greeks, it referred to the ancient historical land. The economic growth of Thessaloniki and other Macedonian urban centers coincided with a Greek cultural and political renaissance. Emmanouel Pappas, today considered a Greek hero along with the unnamed Macedonians who fought with him, led and coordinated the Greek Revolution in Macedonia.

The fall and massacre of Naoussa ended the Greek Revolution in Macedonia, and the region remained under Ottoman rule. In the early 20th century, the area became a national cause contested by Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia. After the Balkan Wars and the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913, the southern part of Macedonia became part of the Greek state. It remained a single administrative division until the 1987 reform, when it was split into Western Macedonia and Central Macedonia; the eastern part became the Drama-Kavala-Xanthi Super-prefecture until 2010, then part of the Eastern Macedonia and Thrace division. The region is now further divided between the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace and the Decentralized Administration of Epirus and Western Macedonia. It also includes the autonomous monastic community of Mount Athos, which is politically under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (through a civil administrator) and religiously under the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

Macedonia remains an important economic center for Greece. It produces the majority of the country’s agricultural output and is a major contributor to industry and tourism. Thessaloniki, the region’s metropolis, is Greece’s second-largest city and a key economic, industrial, cultural, commercial, and political hub. Central Macedonia is Greece’s leading tourist region and the most popular destination that is not an island. The area contains four UNESCO World Heritage sites, including Aigai (modern Vergina, about 12 km from Veria), the first Macedonian capital, where Philip II was assassinated and Alexander the Great was crowned. Pella (near the modern town of Pella and Giannitsa), which replaced Aigai as the capital in the fourth century BC and was Alexander’s birthplace, is also in the region, as is Stagira, the birthplace of Aristotle.

The name Macedonia comes from the ancient kingdom (later region) named after the Macedonians, who were descendants of a Bronze-Age Greek tribe. Their name is related to the Ancient Greek adjective *makednos*, meaning ‘tall, slim,’ and is traditionally derived from the Indo-European root *mak-*, meaning ‘long’ or ‘slender.’ Linguist Robert S. P. Beekes suggests both terms are of Pre-Greek substrate origin and cannot be explained by Indo-European morphology, though his views are not mainstream, and De Decker argues his evidence is insufficient. The region has also historically been known as *Makedoniya* in Bulgarian and local South Slavic dialects, *Makedonya* in Turkish, *Machedonia* in Aromanian, and *Machedonia* in Megleno-Romanian.

The term “Aegean Macedonia” emerged after the Balkan Wars to refer to the region. Yugoslavs and Bulgarians have used this term instead of “Greek Macedonia.” During the Yugoslav period and after North Macedonia’s independence in 1991, Macedonian textbooks included maps showing an enlarged Macedonia that included Greek and Bulgarian territory. Ethnic Macedonians have envisioned Greek Macedonia (called “Aegean Macedonia”) as part of a “Greater Macedonia” and have circulated maps promoting this concept. Aegean Refugee Associations have also promoted the irredentist idea of a United Macedonia. The name “Aegean Macedonia” sometimes challenges the legitimacy of Greek sovereignty over the area and has not been recognized in Greece. Macedonian members of the Joint Macedonian–Greek Committee agreed to remove the term from textbooks.