From here you can read and see that the people living in Macedonia had never anything with the Bulgars. The "newcommers" were always refered to by the Byzintines as "Slavs", speaking "Slavonic", as can be seen from many references. The native Macedonians mixed with the newly arrieved Slavs to form todays Macedonian nation! Enjoy. ----------------------------------------------------- From the close of the 6th century the territory of Macedonia, like the other Byzantine dominions in the Balkans, was exposed to continual settlement by the trans-Danubian Slav tribes. From that time onwards the city of Salonica became an object of Slavonic and combined Slavonic and Avar sieges and attacks. As a result of large-scale and intensive Slav colonization, in the 30's of the 7th century the whole territory of Macedonia, with the exception of Salonica, was settled by Slavs (1). Influenced by its Slavonic surroundings even Salonica underwent considerable Slavonic influence so that in the 9th century, in the Life of St. Methodius. it is written that "all the citizens of Salonica speak a pure Slavonic" (2). Thus, as was stated by the French Byzantine scholar P. Lemerle, "Macedonia in the 7th and 8th centuries was more Slavonic than Greek" (3). According to G. Ostrogorsky. Macedonia was at this time lost to Byzantium "and found itself in the hands of the Slavs, consisting of a conglomeration of Sklavinii" (4). These were the districts of distinct Slav tribes: the Dragoviti, Sagudati. Velegiziti. Strumjani. Smoljani, Rinhini, Berziti. etc. (5). As a result of the Slav colonization of Macedonia certain radical ethnic and socio-economic changes took place. The Slavonic ethnos became dominant. The native inhabitants, the Macedonians, had continued to exist and, after the extinction of the ancient Macedonian state in the 2nd century BC at the hands of the Romans, as writes F. Papazoglou (6) "maintaining their ethnic characteristics, their language, their belief and customs' they were by the period of Slavonic colonization already perceptibly diluted" (7). Those, however, who had remained in their native homesteads gradually became assimilated by particular Slavonic tribes, in the process transmitting to the Slavs certain of their own customs, the Christian faith, culture and also the name of their fatherland and their identity, Macedonia and Macedonians. This had the effect that the Byzantine authors of the 8th century called the Slavicised districts "the Sklavinii" in Macedonia (8). Bibliography 1.Dokumenti za borbata na makedonskiot narod za samostojnost i za nacionalna drzhava I, Skopje, 1981, 32-33, CF.:B. Panov, Srednovekovna Makedonija, III, Skopje 1985, 13ff. 2. Dokumenti, I, 67-68 3. Lemerle, Philippes et la Macedoine orientale a l'epoche chretienne et byzantine, Paris, 1945, 115-116. 4. Ostrogorski, Vizantija i Sloveni, Beograd, 1969, 12. Dokumenti, I, 29, and note 65-70 5. Papazoglou, Makedonski gradovi vo rimsko vreme, Skopje, 1957, 4: A, Shofman, Istoriya Antichniy Makedonii, I, Kazan, 1960, 177 ff.; ibidem, Ocherki po istorii Makedonii i makedonskogo naroda, I, Kazan, 1960, 32 ff. 6. St. Koledarov, Obrazovanie na tema Makedonija v Trakija, Izvestija na instituta po Istorija, 21, Sofija, 1970, 226 ff. 7. Dokumenti I, 42-43, Poopstojno za makedonskite Sklavinii, ef. 8. S. Antoljak, Srednovekovna Makedonija, I, Skopje, 1985, 127 ff.