Yugoslavia was a country in southeast Europe, in the part of Europe called the Balkans. It was put together after the First World War, in the 1920s, out of several small nations that spoke related languages, and it lasted until the early 1990s. It was made of six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia (now North Macedonia), Serbia and Montenegro. For much of its life it was a communist country, but it kept apart from the Soviet Union and went its own way.

In the 1990s it broke apart, and the breaking was terrible — a series of wars, with tens of thousands killed and cities under siege. One by one the republics became separate countries. Serbia and Montenegro stayed joined until 2003 and then also separated. Today the name Yugoslavia is on no map.

Now the word itself. Yugoslav is the adjective and also the person: a Yugoslav passport, he was a Yugoslav. Yugoslavia is the country. Yugoslavian is another adjective form you will meet; both are used, with Yugoslav slightly more common. Because the country is gone, you will almost always see it with words like former or ex- in front: the former Yugoslavia.

The meaning of the name is a small gift to a learner: jug means south in the Slavic languages, so Yugoslavia is simply the land of the south Slavs. The Slavs are a large family of peoples across eastern Europe — Russians, Poles, Czechs, Serbs and many more. So the country's name was really a description of who lived there.