Municipalities of Macedonia

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Updates: 

ISO 3166-2 Newsletter Number I-9 was published on 2007-11-28. It assigns numeric ISO codes to the municipalities, superseding the former alphabetic codes. The old codes were the same as the HASC codes listed below, with hyphens rather than periods as delimiters.

"Ershiyi (21) Shiji Shijie Diming Lu", a three-volume world gazetteer, gives the populations of the thirty counties as of 1994. I have used these data in the table under Change history (1976), superseding the 1967 estimates that were there previously.

ISO 3166-2 Newsletter I-8, published on 2007-04-17, has ISO codes for the municipalities of Macedonia. They can all be deduced from the HASC codes.

FIPS 10-4 Change Notice 11, dated 2006-07-11, has dropped "The Former Republic of" from the name of the country. According to FIPS, it is now simply Macedonia.

Change Notice 7 to FIPS PUB 10-4 is dated 2002-01-10. It assigns FIPS codes to the 123 municipalities of Macedonia (see Change history). These are the divisions that were enacted in 1996-09.

The Macedonian language uses a Cyrillic alphabet, which has to be transliterated for use in English. The transliteration uses the special characters č, Č, š, Š, ž, Ž, and Ð. In case they don't display properly on your browser, they represent, respectively, the letters c, C, s, S, z, and Z with carons, and the letter D with a horizontal bar.

In 1999, the CIA World Factbook had a list of municipalities for Macedonia which was similar to the pre-1996 list shown in "Administrative Subdivisions of Countries". The differences were that the Factbook used the name Murgaševo instead of Demir Hisar (the same place), and replaced Skopje with Skopje-Centar, Skopje-Cair, Skopje-Karpos, Skopje-Kisela Voda, and Skopje-Gazi Baba.

Additional resources: This UNEP report  on pollution in Macedonia contains several maps showing 29 "counties" (the pre-1996 divisions). The clearest is on page 40. Note: the missing county, Valandovo, is in the northeast part of Gevgelija. The 84 municipalities are attested by the Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in the Republic of Macedonia, 2002 - Book XIII  on the State Statistical Office website. This document has a municipalities map on page 7.

Country overview: 

The territory now constituting "the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" was part of the Ottoman Empire in 1900. By the Bucharest Peace Treaty of 1913-08-10, Serbia acquired the territory (except for a small area around Strumica, which was part of Bulgaria until World War I). Serbia, with Macedonia, became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes on 1918-12-04. This kingdom was soon being called Yugoslavia, although the name didn't become official until 1929. Macedonia became one of the six constituent republics of Yugoslavia under the constitution of 1945. It declared independence from Yugoslavia on 1991-01-25. International recognition came slowly, primarily because Greece objected to its use of the name Macedonia. On 1995-09-13, Greece and Macedonia agreed to normalize relations.

Other names of country: 

1. Danish: Makedonien, Den Tidligere Jugoslaviske Republik Makedonien (formal)
2. Dutch: Macedonië, Republiek Macedonië (formal)
3. English: the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (formal), FYROM (informal)
4. Finnish: Makedonia, Entisen Jugoslavian tasavalta Makedonia (formal)
5. French: Macédoine, Ex-République f Yougoslave de Macédoine f (formal)
6. German: Mazedonien, Ehemalige jugoslawische Republik f Mazedonien n (formal)
7. Icelandic: Makedónía
8. Italian: Macedonia f
9. Macedonian: Republika Makedonija (formal)
10. Norwegian: Den tidligere jugolaviske republikk Makedonia (formal) (Bokmål), Den tidligere jugoslaviske republikken Makedonia (formal) (Nynorsk), Makedonia
11. Portuguese: Macedónia, Macedônia (Brazil), Antíga República f Jugoslava da Macedónia f (formal), Antíga República Iugoslava da Macedônia f (formal) (Brazil)
12. Spanish: Macedonia, la ex República f Yugoslava de Macedonia f (formal), Antigua República Yugoslava de Macedonia (formal)
13. Swedish: Makedonien

Origin of name: 

from ethnic name Makedon, probably related to Ancient Greek makednos: extended, broad

Primary subdivisions: 

Macedonia is divided into 84 opštini (sing. opština: municipalities).

Postal codes: 

When Macedonia first gained independence from Yugoslavia, it continued to use the old Yugoslav postal codes. They were five digits, and for locations in Macedonia, the first digit was 9. More recently, Macedonia has begun to use four-digit postal codes. For international mail, especially from Europe, it is optional to prefix the postal code with MK- or MAK-.

Further subdivisions:

1. In 1968, Skopje commune is shown divided into three parts: Idadija, Kale, and Kisela Voda.
2. In 1994, Skopje municipality is shown divided into five parts: Čair, Centar, Gazi Baba, Karpoš, and Kisela Voda.

Change history: 

1. The Ministry of Local Government  has a Chronology. I did my best to translate it from Macedonian. It lacks substantiating details, so there is no good way to settle discrepancies between the Ministry's information and other sources.
2. The territory of Macedonia was parts of the Turkish provinces of Kosovo, Monastir, and Saloniki before 1913. From 1918 to 1945 it was part of Serbia within Yugoslavia.
3. 1945: Macedonia became a republic of Yugoslavia, subdivided into the kotari (regions) of Bitola, Kumanovo, Ohrid, Skopje, Štip, Tetovo, and Titov Veles. The Ministry site disagrees. It says that by a 1945 law, Macedonia was divided into four okruzi (regions), 32 okolii, and 894 local people's committees.
4. 1952-1955: Regions abolished and replaced by opštini (communes).
5. 1952: Number of opshtini retuced from 223 to 86, and of okolii from 18 to 7.
6. 1957: Number of opshtini reduced to 73.
7. 1965: New law reduced the number of opshtini to 32, and abolished the okolii.
8. 1976: Macedonia had 34 opshtini, including Centar, Čair, Gazi Baba, Karpoš, and Kisela Voda. The latter five, considered as a unit, formed Skopje City, which had the special status of opshtini-like political union (opštestveno-politička zaednica).

1. Note: In the above table, I originally assigned Kratovo a HASC code of MK.KT. I have changed it to MK.KY because it appears to have the same boundaries as the municipality called Kratovo after 1996.
2. 1991-11-20: New constitution specified a division into municipalities, equivalent to the former communes, with the City of Skopje as a special unit.
3. 1996-09: Macedonia reorganized into 123 opštini (sing. opština: municipalities), as shown in the following table, by a Law on Territorial Division.

1. This Macedonian government webpage , and its Macedonian language version , list the country divisions at NUTS levels 3, 4, and 5. The NUTS-3 divisions are eight arbitrary statistical regions. The NUTS-4 divisions are the same as the thirty communes from the period before 1996, except that Skopje is replaced by five NUTS-4 divisions: Čair, Centar, Gazi Baba, Karpoš, and Kisela Voda. The NUTS-5 divisions are the 123 municipalities. However, these documents don't give the specific NUTS codes used.
2. 2004-08-11: Law on Territorial Organization passed by Parliament (and published in official gazette on 2004-08-16), reorganizing Macedonia into 84 municipalities, as shown under Primary subdivisions. In most cases, the new municipalities are equal to one or several of the old ones, but Butel municipality was split from Čair and Aerodrom municipality from Kisela Voda.
4. With one exception, each of the 84 municipalities is a subset of one of the thirty pre-1996 communes. The exception is Dolneni (HASC code MK.DE). It consists of two 1996-2004-era municipalities: Dolneni (MK.DN) and Žitoše (MK.ZI). Going back before 1996, those areas were in Prilep (MK.PL) and Kruševo (MK.KR), respectively.

Other names of subdivisions: 

The Macedonian language is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, so the usual vagaries of transliteration are found. For example, č and š may be transliterated as c and s, or as ch and sh.

1. Bitola: Bitolia, Monastir (obsolete)
2. Brod: Makedonska Brod (variant)
3. Demir Hisar: Murgaševo (variant)
4. Džepčište: Dzhepishte (variant)
5. Gevgelija: Djevdjelija (variant)
6. Gostivar: Kostovo (obsolete)
7. Ohrid: Ochrida, Okhrida (obsolete)
8. Skopje: Skoplie, Skoplje, Üskub, Uskup (obsolete)
9. Štip: Ishtip, Istib (obsolete)
10. Titov Veles: Veles (variant)