📅 ON THIS DAY IN BULGARIA, Saturday 15 August
If a single date could sum up how Bulgarians actually live their calendar, it would be 15 August. The country's biggest women's name day, seven towns holding their official celebrations, Varna's own city day, and underneath it all the anniversary of a schoolteacher turned revolutionary killed at twenty-five.
What happened on this day
On 15 August 1903, in a mountain skirmish a long way from anywhere a British expat is likely to drive, Velyan (Vele) Iliev Chipurov was killed fighting Ottoman troops. He was born in 1878 in Smilevo, a village in the Bitola region of what was then the Ottoman Empire and is today North Macedonia, educated at the Bulgarian classical gymnasium in Bitola, then spent his first working years teaching in Bitola, in German, in the Prespa villages and back home in Smilevo. The schoolmaster-to-guerrilla pipeline of those years was quite literal, and Vele walked it.
In July 1901 he went underground, joining the armed bands of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation under voivodes Nikola Rusinski, Deyan Dimitrov and Slaveyko Arsov. At the Smilevo congress he was named a district leader for Prespa alongside Nikola Kokarev and Naum Fotev. When the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising broke out on 2 August 1903, his detachment fought at Nakolec and Rambi. Thirteen days later, on 15 August, he and Kokarev were killed together in a clash with Ottoman soldiers in the Dupenska mountain, and he was buried in the village of Shturbovo. Most Bulgarians under 40 would not place his name off the top of their head either: he is one of hundreds of young voivodes the uprising consumed. His ground was Prespa, across the modern border, so do not look for his statue in Shumen.
Today's name days
Today is Golyama Bogoroditsa, the Dormition (the 'falling asleep') of the Virgin Mary, and it is the single biggest name day for women in the Bulgarian year. Every Maria, Mara, Mariyka, Mari and Masha celebrates, which in practice means half the country has someone to congratulate. The faithful mark it with pilgrimages to the Troyan, Bachkovo and Rila monasteries, and the traditional gifts are flowers and gold-plated icons. For a modern anchor, Maria Grozdeva, the pistol shooter who took Olympic gold in 2000 and again in 2004, is probably the most decorated Maria the country has produced.
Also celebrating, slightly unexpectedly to foreign ears, are Preslav and Preslava. The name shares its root with Veliki Preslav, the medieval Bulgarian capital a short drive from Shumen, which makes today the closest thing our corner of the country has to a hometown name day.
The full roll-call runs wider still: Marin, Mariyan and Marian on the men's side, with Mariana and Mariyana, Mira, Mika, Marietta, Mariela and Mario joining the women. The complete list, with the date for every name, is in the Bulgarian name-days guide.
The bit that surprises Brits: in the UK you wait for an invitation, but on a major name day in Bulgaria the celebrant keeps an open house. Friends, neighbours and colleagues simply turn up, unannounced, and are fed. The golden rule is never to arrive empty-handed: a cake, a banitsa, chocolates or a bottle of wine all work, and flowers for women should be an odd number, never even. A cheerful "честит имен ден" (chesh-TEET ee-MEN den), happy name day, covers the greeting, and our phrasebook has the rest of the small talk.
Towns celebrating today
Varna takes the honours. The sea capital holds its official city day on 15 August, the Feast of the Assumption, and has done since 1933, so expect the area around the golden-domed cathedral to be busy. For British expats in the northeast it is barely an hour and a half up the motorway from Shumen.
In the Balkan range, Shipka celebrates too: the small town below the famous pass, with its Memorial Church built for the Russian and Bulgarian dead of the 1877-78 war. Nesebar, the UNESCO-listed old town on its peninsula, keeps the feast as its town day, as do Nikopol on the Danube (the name is Greek for 'city of victory') and Ihtiman, the town every Sofia-to-Plovdiv driver knows from the motorway signs.
Brusartsi, a small town in Montana oblast, takes the sensible approach and celebrates on the weekend after the 15th, while the village of Strazhitsa near Balchik rounds out the list.
Why this matters for British expats
Practically, today is the day your Bulgarian social knowledge gets tested. Somewhere in your life here there is a Maria, a Mara or a Mira: a neighbour, a colleague, the woman on the cheese stall. Today she is celebrating. Wish her честит имен ден, and if the invitation comes to come round, go, and do not go empty-handed. Because it falls on a Saturday this year, there is no work excuse either way.
There is a quieter lesson too. Days like this are the user manual for the country: the church calendar explaining the street parties, the name days explaining the queue at the florist, the half-remembered revolutionaries explaining the plaques in every mountain village. Learn a handful of these dates and Bulgaria stops being a place you live in and starts being a place you can read.
Sources and further reading
The story of Velyan Iliev draws on his Bulgarian Wikipedia biography, which records the Prespa fighting, his death alongside Nikola Kokarev and his burial in Shturbovo. The name-day details follow the standard Bulgarian name-days calendar, and the town celebrations follow regional municipal listings of official city days.