Are FYROM's residents Macedonians? My opinion is that they are so confused that they don't even know themeselves. The following opinions are expressed though their web sites: Some of them believe they are descedants of ancient Macedonians Some of them beleive that they can consider themeselves Macedonians since they live in a part of what used to be ancient Macedonia Some of them believe they are Macedonians but not directly linked to ancient Macedonians Some of them believe they are Macedonians because they are free to call themselves as they like(!!!) I will assume that their official position is the one given by their president Mr. Kiro Gligorov: "We are Slavs who came to this area in the sixth century ... we are not descendants of the ancient Macedonians." (from the Foreign Information Service Daily Report, Eastern Europe, February 26, 1992, p. 35. ) "We are Macedonians but we are Slav Macedonians. That's who we are! We have no connection to Alexander the Greek and his Macedonia. The ancient Macedonians no longer exist, they had disappeared from history long time ago. Our ancestors came here in the 5th and 6th century (A.D)." (from the Toronto Star newspaper, March 15, 1992) The following questions arise immidiatelly Why do you call yourselves Macedonians then? Why do you use ancient Macedonian symbols if they don't belong to you? The historic truth is that the Slavs descented into the region not before the 6th century long after ancient Macedonia was homogenized with the rest of Greece. They don't have any historical cultural or linguistic ties with ancient Macedonia and they would be realy foolish if they officialy claimed that they did. There is no historic or archaeological evidence connecting them with ancient Macedonia. In any case occupying 25% of ancient Macedonian land does not give them the right to steal the Greek-Macedonian history and culture. The Macedonian civilization was part of the ancient Greek civilization. It is part of Greece's national inheritance and it can not be used by anyone else.