Countries are kind of like people. Every one of them has a name. Just like people sometimes they change their names.

There are a host of reasons why countries change their names and for every country that does change its name, there's a different story behind it.

Learn more about the countries that were formerly known as other countries

and why they did it, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. The As there are a bunch of countries whose name has changed, we might as well jump right into it with the latest country to change their name, North Macedonia.

As I mentioned in the introduction, every country that changes its name does so for a slightly

different reason.

In the case of North Macedonia, it has to do with history. In particular, ancient history.

When most people think of Macedonia they think of the Macedonian Empire,

Philip the second, and his son Alexander the Great. The Macedonian Empire was pretty short-lived.

It eventually became a Roman province.

And about 1500 years ago,

Slavic people migrated into the Balkans,

occupying much, but not all, of the land which used to be Macedonia.

When the nation of Yugoslavia was formed, one of the constituent republics was called

the Republic of Macedonia.

However, Greece also has a province called Macedonia, which is located on

the other part of the land which used to be ancient Macedonia. So long as Macedonia was a part of

Yugoslavia, this wasn't that big of an issue.

However, when Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s, Macedonia declared itself independent and

kept the name, the Republic of Macedonia. Greece objected when they tried to join the United Nations,

and Macedonia was forced to go by the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia.

I should note that this was not recognized as the name of the country.

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