Mali Vlaj
| Mali Vlaj | |
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| Village | |
| Мали Влај | |
St. Nicholas Church of Mali Vlaj
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 Mali Vlaj
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| Coordinates: 41°07′09″N 20°36′56″E / 41.11917°N 20.61556°ECoordinates: 41°07′09″N 20°36′56″E / 41.11917°N 20.61556°E | |
| Country | Republic of Macedonia |
| Municipality | Struga municipality |
| Statistical region | Southwestern Statistical Region |
| Elevation | 857 m (2,812 ft) |
| Population (2002) | |
| • Total | 71 |
| Time zone | CET (UTC+1) |
| • Summer (DST) | CEST (UTC+2) |
| Area code(s) | +38946 |
| Car plates | SU |
| Website | . |
Mali Vlaj (Macedonian: Мали Влај) is a village in the municipality of Struga, Republic of Macedonia.
The toponym is first recorded as a plural in the name Frougovi Vlasi. The form Vlaj is an old accusative occurring as a plural in Vlahy> Vlahi> Vlai> Vlaj and these forms stemmed from Vla(s)hci meaning residents from the village Vlas(c)i. The c sound in Vlahci was assimilated over time becoming Vlaj and the toponym is related to Vlachs. With the loss of the grammatical case in the Macedonian language, the toponym Vlaj was no longer understood in the plural, instead in the singular. The adjective Мали/Mali meaning small in the names of the villages is usually used if there is an opposition of a larger settlement with the word Голем/Golem meaning big or toponyms without an additive. Nearby there is no appropriate toponym with the adjective large in modern times, but it is possible that this settlement is in opposition to the village Rëmenj on the Albanian side of Lake Ohrid meaning Vlachs (Aromanians). In the Albanian language, Mali Vlaj is known by the forms Ërmas and Ermëz, meaning Vlachs.
During the mid-fourteenth century, a document of Serbian Tsar Stefan Dušan refers to property of St Clement church in Ohrid with the settlement recorded under the name Frugovi Vlasi, which later possibly broke up into two villages identified as being modern Mali Vlaj and nearby Frangovo. Local traditions in the Struga area refer to the residents of Mali Vlaj as originating from Rëmenj, Albania arriving in the late eighteenth century. Modern Mali Vlaj is without an Aromanian population though the Aromanian inhabitants of nearby Gorna Belica and Dolna Belica remember that once the village was populated by Aromanians.
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