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The Macedonia naming dispute is a political dispute regarding the use of the name Macedonia by the (Former Yugoslav) Republic of Macedonia, formerly a federal unit of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In antiquity, the territory of the present-day (Former Yugoslav) Republic of Macedonia equated approximately to the kingdom of Paeonia, which lay immediately north of ancient Macedonia. The modern Greek province of Macedonia approximately corresponds to that of ancient Macedonia.
Pertinent to its background is an early 20th-century armed conflict that formed part of the background to the Balkan Wars and the battle for control over the area of historical Macedonia. The specific naming dispute was ignited in 1963 when Josip Broz Tito aiming to wrest the historical Macedonia from Greece and force an outlet to the Aegean sea for his country, renamed the southern Vardar Banovina of Yugoslavia by the name, "Socialist Republic of Macedonia" at the same time the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was renamed the "Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia".
With the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991, the former Socialist Republic of Macedonia was expected to end the communist expansionist agenda on Greece's northern province by choosing a name for itself that did not imply territorial claims on northern Greece. Instead, the newly founded country dropped the "Socialist" from its name and kept "Macedonia". Greece objected with an eventual UN interim accord being signed giving the newly created Slavic state the appellation "Former Yugoslav" as a provisional term to be used only until the dispute was resolved. Since then, it has been an ongoing issue in bilateral and international relations.
