 "Slavic-speakers") or "dopii", which means "locals" or "indigenous" in Greek (from Ancient Greek ἐντόπιος - "entopios", "local").The vast majority of them espouse a Greek national identity and are bilingual in Greek.They live mostly in the Periphery of Western Macedonia and belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, which in conjunction with the "millet" system of the Ottoman Empire which occupied the region until 1913, may explain their self-identification as Greeks.