>>>Just a bit of a puzzle, why would it be in the plurals. Balkan is a single peninsula, named after one single mountain, not a mountain chain.
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>>I thought the Balkan Peninsula got it's name from the tallest mountain, and that the Balkan region (the Balkans) is named for the Balkan Mountains which is a range.
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>But the peninsula and the region are the same thing, IMO. Which is why the plural is puzzling.

I would say, semantically they aren't the same thing. The Balkan Peninsula is the land mass, and the Balkans is the people, the culture, the political divisions etc. Sort of like the Iberian Peninsula is not really the same thing as Spain and Portugal (and a couple of other places). Besides isn't there more than one Balkan state? The Balkans is usually used as a short form for The Balkan States.

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>Probably a habit, then - it's singular in South Slavic languages. Funny though that I've seen it in plural a thousand times and it didn't strike me as odd or even weird.
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>Must be one of those jamais vu moments.