PROPER NAME FORMULA AMONG MUSLIMS IN MACEDONIAN LANGUAGE

Abstract

The Republic of North Macedonia is a country located in the heart of the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. It is relatively young country, which gained independence in 1991-th. It`s population is mixed, and of different ethnic and religious backgrounds. For the purposes of this paper, we are interested in the religious structure of the population, of which 65% are Orthodox Christians, 33% are Muslims, and the remaining 2% are of other religious affiliations.From the presented demographic structure of this country, it can be concluded that one third of its population is made up of Muslims (Albanians, Turks, Macedonian-Muslims, Bosniaks and an insignificant number of Muslim Roma). Both, Macedonians and Muslims have their own characteristics in naming people. These features are directly related of their religion and different from the characteristic of the nameingamong Orthodox Macedonians. This means that my paper will cover the anthroponyms(personal names, surnames and nicknames) of the population of Muslims in the Republic of North Macedonia. These anthroponymic categories will be represented by an anthropological and sociological point of view, and also by applying a comparative onomastic method.