Republic of North Macedonia Municipalities (original) (raw)

Home Buy data Donate

Updates:

On February 12, 2019, the Republic of North Macedonia (formerly the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM) notified the UN of its change of name. This is in accordance with the terms of the Prespa Agreement, which was concluded on June 12, 2018 between Greece and FYROM.

Effective 2013-04-05 these five municipalities combined into the new Kicevo municipality: Drugovo, Kicevo, Oslomej, Vranestica, and Zajas. Effective Spellings changed from Debarca to Debrca and Rostusa to Rostuse on 2014-10-21

"Geopolitical Entities, Names, and Codes, Edition 2" (GENC), a U.S. standard that's supposed to correspond to ISO 3166-2, was issued on 2014-03-31. It used the same codes as ISO did, except that it deleted the entries for the fourteen municipalities marked with asterisks in the table below, and replaced them with Skopje, codeMK-85. On 2015-11-27, ISO posted changes that brought it back in synch with GENC.

Update 12 to "Geopolitical Entities and Codes" (GEC) is dated 2013-06-30. It changes the name of Češinovo to Češinovo-Obleševo, which was already shown on this page. It also combines fourteen municipalities into one, Skopje (FIPS code MKF6). The merged municipalities are the ones marked with asterisks in the main table below.

Update 10 to GEC is dated 2012-12-31. It assigns a code to Kruševo, which had lacked one.

ISO 3166-2 Newsletter II-3 is dated 2011-12-15. It merely changes the sort order of the divisions of Macedonia.

Before 2010-04, the equivalent of the GEC standard was FIPS PUB 10-4. It listed codes for 83 of the 84 current municipalities in Macedonia. However, the code MKF2 was used for two entries, Aerodrom and Vinitsa. Update 4 to that standard was issued on 2011-04-30. It corrected the error by raising the last three codes in sequence to the next higher number.

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 as in ISO 3166-2 Newsletter I-8, published on 2007-04-17. Those can all be derived from the HASC codes by replacing periods with hyphens as delimiters.

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.

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.

Country overview:

The territory now constituting "the Republic of North 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. Albanian: Maqedonia e Veriut
2. Danish: Nordmakedonien
3. Dutch: Noord-Macedonië
4. English: North Macedonia
5. Finnish: Pohjois-Makedonia
6. French: Macédoine du Nord
7. German: Nordmazedonien
8. Greek: Bóρεια Mακεδoνια
9. Icelandic: Norður -Makedónía
10. Italian: Macedonia del Nord
11. Macedonian: Северна Македонија
12. Norwegian: Nord-Makedonia
13. Portuguese: Macedônia do Norte
14. Russian: Северная Македония
15. Serbian: Северна Македонија
16. Spanish: Macedonia del Norte
17. Swedish: Nordmakedonien
18. Turkish: Kuzey Makedonya

Origin of name:

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

Primary subdivisions:

North Macedonia is divided into 80 opštini (sing. opština: municipalities).

Postal codes:

When the territory now known as North Macedonia first gained independence from Yugoslavia, it continued to use the old Yugoslav postal codes. They were five digits, and for locations in North Macedonia, the first digit was 9. More recently, North 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.

Territorial extent:

The UN LOCODE page for North Macedonia lists locations in the country, some of them with their latitudes and longitudes, some with their ISO 3166-2 codes for their subdivisions. This information can be put together to approximate the territorial extent of subdivisions.

Change history:

1. I've made use of the chronology found in source [7].
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. (This link is dead, and we do not have a replacement yet).
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.
3. 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.
4. 2019-02-12: The Republic of North Macedonia notified the UN of its name change, in accordance with the Prespa Agreement which was agreed upon by Greece and former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) on 2018-06-12.

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: Skopie (Spanish); Skoplie, �skub, Uskup (obsolete); Skoplje (Dutch, Spanish)
9. Štip: Ishtip, Istib (obsolete)
10. Titov Veles: Veles (variant)

Sources:

1. [1] Mardešić, Petar, and Zvonimir Dugački. Geografski Atlas Jugoslavije. Zagreb: Znanje, 1961.
2. [2] Mardešić, Petar, and Oto Oppitz. Jugoslavenski Leksikografski Zavod. Zagreb, 1969.
3. [3] Territory and Administration in Europe. Robert Bennett, ed. Pinter Publishers, London and New York, 1989.
4. [4] Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States 1992. Europa Publications Ltd., London, 1992.
5. [5] A 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. (Retrieved 2009-12-21; in Macedonian.)
6. [6] The Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in the Republic of Macedonia, 2002 - Book XIII , on the State Statistical Office website, lists 84 municipalities, and has a map of municipalities (page 7). (Retrieved 2009-12-21; bilingual.)
7. [7] Territorial chronology, Ministry of Local Government, http://www.mls.gov.mk/default.asp?id=teritorial (dead link, retrieved 2006-09-08). A copy can be found on theInternet Archive site. 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.
8. [8] "Ershiyi (21) Shiji Shijie Diming Lu". Beijing, 2001.
9. [9] Ministry of Local Self-Government . The figures shown in this source don't add up to the total given.
10. [10] UN Agreement 2018-06-12 . Instituting the name Republic of North Macedonia.
11. [11] ResearchGate . The ethnic structure of the population in the municipality of Kichevo and its territorial distribution.
12. [12] Wikipedia . Cesinovo-Oblesevo Municipality.
13. [13] State Statistical Office, Macedonia . Statistics.
14. [14] Official Gazette .
15. [15] Ministry of Local Self Government .