A term used by Bulgarians, Macedonians, Romanians and Albanians to characterize the people of Greek minority populations who tend to feel Greek instead of Bulgarian or Macedonian (the
case of Slavophone Greeks), Romanian (Aromanians) and Albanian (Arvanites).
Considered highly pejorative and insulting to the aforementioned people of these Greek
sub-populations, it essentially means "pretending to be Greek" and suggests that their "Greekness" is inauthentic and are thus brainwashed (at
best) or traitors (at worst) to the Macedonian, Bulgarian, Romanian or Albanian nations.
The Greek Hellenization process, which was an assimilationist policy of successive Greek Kingdoms and Republics since independence, largely ensured that
Greece's minority populations adopted the Hellenic national
identity despite being ethnically non-Greek and despite other competing nationalisms in the region. This was extremely significant in a
land like the Balkans, where nationalism and belonging are the cornerstone of your whole
identity.
1. The Arvanites aren't Greek. They're part of Greater
Albania, they just
don't know it! They are such grecomen!
2. Everyone knows that the Slavs of Northern
Greece are really Bulgarian but one of those grecoman bastards punched me in the mouth when I told him he wasn't really Greek.