Serbian Colony in Thessalonica

[Vasiliye]

http://www.etno-institut.co.yu/GEI/GEI_LIV/goca.pdf.

Serbian Colony in Thessalonica
Personal Names and Ethnic Markers in Registers (1896-1945)
Key words: Serbs in Thessalonica, baptism, name and
family name, religious conversion, Mace-
donian influence
The church of Saint Sava is located at center of Thessalonica; from 1896,
the church served as a parish church for Serbian population. The church Register
from 1896-1945 is used in this paper. The Serbs from Thessalonica were mostly
craftsmen, bankers and traders. All engaged in business that required the knowledge
of Greek language, but still had a need for Serbian parish and church services in
Serbian language. And although Serbian, the parish was also open to other ethnic
groups. For example, Russians used its services for baptism, and there are data indi-
cating that a certain proportion of Jews, Muslims, Protestant and Catholics got con-
verted in the church, confirming its missionary dimension. These individuals kept
their first names even after the conversions. The Serbs named their children in Ser-
bian fashion, not Greek. However, the Serbs from Thessalonica who came to ex-
Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, after WW II, encountered a different situation.
Macedonian influence is evident in their first and last names. For instance, name
Andjelija becomes Anga, and last name Filipovic becomes Filipovski. The re-
spected parents were Serbs. There is only one case where an adopted Greek, raised
by Serbs in Thessalonica, had changed his first and last name in Macedonian fash-
ion. The phenomenon assumes preservation of Serbian names in ethnically totally
different environment, such as Greece, and the absence of the same in ethnically
similar environment such as Macedonia.

[Spartan]

Interesting post. I never realized there were enough Serbians in Thessaloniki to require their own church. It would also be interesting if you could find any kind of verification of the Serbians of Thessaloniki changing their names when they went to FYROM.

[Flipper]

Simple...

Why do you think there's a Serbian monastery (some proclaim it is FYROMian lol) in mount Athos? Why was the first Greek newspaper printed in Greek and Serbian?

The Serbian community was strong and the cooperation with the Greek one was close.

[Vasiliye]

The cases mentioned in the -pdf article from the Ethnographic Institute of the Serbian Academy of Scienceis and Arts, are the following (and these are only examples):

Serbian name>FYROMian variant
Andjelija > Anga
Vasiliye > Vasko
Arseniye > Arsen
Filipovic > Filipovski
Dyurovic > Gyurovski


The goverment of Communist FYROM gave them those names and surnames in order to turn those Serbs into Pseudomacedonians.That is exactly the same as the process of Pseudomacedonization of names and surnames of Serbian inhabitants from the ares of Tetovo, Skopska Crna Gora, Kumanovo.

Bulgarians of post-1944 FYROM were not the only ethnic element which was Pseudomacedonized........................