Does anybody know when the "vski"was introduced to the Macedonian surnames? I ask this because I know my family name used to end with "vic"(so, xxxxkovic) during the era of my grandparents, and I know many people also had "xxxxkov", just like the Bulgarians but, I can't find out when exactly people were forced to change to "vski".
I managed to dig out the account of one Bogdan Popov, a native of RoM, from the mid-90's from
alt.news.macedonia:
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Newsgroups: alt.news.macedonia
From: bog...@world.std.com (Bogdan Popov)
Date: 1996/09/10
Subject: Macedonian last names
From: Slavko Mangovski <ma...@gate.NET>
>Would you care to elaborate as to when, how and by
>whom the -ski endings were "adopted for political reasons -
>to distinguish us from the Bulgarian sounding "ov/ev."
It was done in 1944 (and after) by the Macedonian Communist Party
and it was implemented by the obedient local Party activists and
officials (usually 19 years old highschool drop-outs) in the
towns of SR Macedonia. The policy had different "success rate",
depending on the town, but most of the times it was done without
consent of the affected people.
Some people managed to keep their last names the way they use to
be by sacrificing in most of the cases their professional
careers. The others, although "big Yugoslavs/sebomans", didn't
change their last names because of the shame from their families
who had been known for years under their original names (Arsov,
Gigov, Gligorov, Grlichkov, Mojsov, Aceva ...).
I know of many cases, but can tell you "first hand" for my family.
My mother's last name was changed in 1945, when she went to
register for highschool. The official there added -SKI to her
last name without asking her. She was 15 at the time.
My father's family had similar experience. Few "activists" from
the Narodno-osloboditelen Odbor (People's Freedom Committee -
what an ironic name!) came to my grandfather's house one day in
1945 and tried to force him to change his last name from POPOV to
POPOVSKI in order to be "in the spirit of the new Yugoslavia"
("vo duhot na novata Jugoslavija").
My grandfather didn't agree, with the words: "Abe deca, ostaite
gi tia majtapi, star sum jas za toa vashe SKI-janje!" (Listen
kids, cut the joke, I am too old for your "SKI-ing!).
He was taken to OZNA (secret police) and none from the family
knew where he was nor whether he was alive for the next three
months. While he was imprisoned, other Party activists came to
my grandmother and tried to "convince" her to add -SKI after the
last name. She said that our family has always been called Popov,
since there were 7 generations of priests in it, so she could not
change willingly the last name to something else. Even more
without the knowledge of my grandfather.
It didn't help. They told her that if she was not going to change
her last name by adding -SKI at the end, she would not see her
husband again and the family was going to be forced out of their
family house and the town.
However, by chance, my grandmother managed to get to one of the
Party officials in town, (who used to be a helper in my
grand-fathers store before the war). He told her that she should
comply "with the new last name policy" since changing of the last
names is a very serious and important issue not only for us, but
for thr whole country, and that "the order came from the
highest place" to "encourage" people to add -SKI to their last
names. "One day", he said, "every single citizen of Yugoslav
Macedonia will have his last name ending on -SKI, and there will
be no more "bulgarian" last names. Sooner or later you too will
have to accept it." He also promised that he will get my
grandfather out of prison (as he was nice to him as a boss before
the war), but she would have to make the decision about the last
name change without my grandfather!
My grandmother had no choice. She agreed to add -SKI to her last
name and to the last names of both of her daughters, but not to
her son's. It was a compromise. That way the Party could still
report "a success", while the last name of the only son will stay
the way it was always. The daughters, she thought, would get
married one day, so their last names didn't matter as
much. That's how my grandfather got released from the prison.
I remember this story clearly since my grandmother used to tell
it many times. She died 5 years ago, but the memory didn't.
However, one of my aunts never married and her last name is still
Popovski. She is aware of the story very well but she never
managed to change her last name back to the old - Popov. In the
first years after the war it was dangerous, and later, she got
used to it, I guess, and it stayed that way till nowadays.
On the other hand, although my grandmothers "official" last name
was Popovski her last wish was to have our old last name POPOV
written on her grave-stone. She didn't have chance to correct her
last name while she was alive, but she left us "amanet" to do it
after her death. And that's the way it was done.
Regards,
Bogdan POPOV
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no, there were endings in Macedonian in -ski prior to WWI (Sandanski, Pulevski, Kyrchovski, Sinaitski, etc.). Do not confuse their formation with the Polish surnames in -ski, however. As far as I know they were limited to the Polish aristocracy.
More interesting are the "mutated" -ski names from Prilepsko, etc., which end in -eski/-oski (instead of in -e
vski/-o
vski) - Taleski, Nikoloski, ... They sound a bit Vlah, dropping the -v- like the Romanian Chaushesku, Stankulescu...
alt.news.macedonia was a great place to have fun and to watch & participate in "triple" fights, between Yugo-Macedonians, Bulgarians and Greeks, over Macedonia. It was the unofficial Maced. site (as the Greeks did not allow the setting of a soc.culture.macedonia-newsgroup, similar to soc.culture.bulgaria or soc.culture.greek). You should pay it a visit some day. Here are more excerpts from there touching on your question:
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groups.google.com/group/alt.news.macedonia/browse_thread/thread/f201d5b945ca4407?hl=en Sep 18 1996, 7:00 am
Newsgroups: alt.news.macedonia
From: Constantin Polychronakos <m...@musica.McGill.CA>
Date: 1996/09/18
Subject: Re: Macedonian last names
> rad...@aol.com (Radeff) writes:
> Mr . Karadjov is prone to finding something Bulgarian in every aspect of
> Macedonian issue. He assumes that someone's grandfather was of a
...
Under the Ottoman empire, Christians were free to declare any nationality they
chose. In fact, the Ottoman authorities always tended to favor the weaker goups, in the true
spirit of "divide and conquer". If "Macedonian" existed as an ethno-national distinction before
1912, and was as oppressed as you believe it to be, the Turks would have been sure to
support it and foster it as a counterweight to the two groups that really worried about: the
Greeks and the Bulgarians.
Look at any pre-1912 source (and there is plenty of material on Macedonia) and
count the -ovski or -evski names in Macedonia, compared to the -ovs and the -evs. Your hero
Gruev, was a teacher at the Bulgarian gymnasium in Thessaloniki. He and Delchev,
Chakalarov, Chernopeyev, Tatarchev, Miladinov, etc, don't exactly strike me as the kind of
people that would chicken out of using their own proper name, or that they would do it for
some material gain.
Yes, some bulgarian names do end in -ski, but almost always after the name of a
place (e.g. Gabrovski, from Gabrovo), never after a person's name, the latter being a 1944
invention.
It is the people that make the names and not the other way around. You can be
proud of your nationality and of its characteristic names. Just don't expect us to change the
history books to accomodate it.
Regards
Constantin Polychronakos
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Also
groups.google.com/group/alt.news.macedonia/browse_thread/thread/da0430056f66580f?hl=en
