A short historical explanation
Natural historians divide the times and conditions that the face of the Earth has passed through, up to our own age, into six main periods, according to changes in the forms of life on Earth, changes in climate and changes in the continents. Each of these periods spans hundreds of millions of years.
These are the six periods:
- The Cambrian period: 540–485 million years ago.
- The Ordovician period: 485–443 million years ago.
- The Silurian period: 443–417 million years ago.
- The Devonian period: 417–359 million years ago.
- The Carboniferous period: 359–299 million years ago.
- The Permian period: 299–248 million years ago.
These are the periods the Earth has passed through. According to the latest scientific findings, humans without reason appeared on this Earth four million years ago, and humans with reason (Homo sapiens sapiens) began five hundred thousand years ago.
To this day, humanity has passed through five great stages of thought (this is from the scientific side; we are not discussing any other side):
- The stage of myth.
- The stage of religion.
- The stage of philosophy.
- The stage of the sciences.
- The stage of technology.
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A few main lines on the history of names
The history of names is so old that no one knows where the story begins. From the start of oral history to written history, people have always had names. To know how the oldest names were chosen, there is still no way other than guessing.
To this day, all historians agree on the first name ever written down in human history: the name Kushim, written in Sumerian like this (𒆪𒋆). It has been found on many Sumerian tablets that date back to the years 3400–3000 BC. It has become clear that this name was used to record the buying and selling of barley.
The word for name is nama in Old High German (OHG) and in Old English, नामन् (nāman) in Sanskrit and ὄνομα (onoma) in Greek, and the Aryans of the Zagros used the word nam (nâm).
The development and importance of names grew together with the development of languages. It passed through many stages in the ancient world, and above all through the Greeks, who, together with the writing of history, brought it to the state we are in now, by giving history a method. To make this point clear, I would like to give an example.
Greek historians did a great deal for the development of historical method. The Histories of Herodotus are counted as the first known critical work of history. They were written by the historian Herodotus (484–425 BC), who is known as "the father of history".
In our modern life it is plain and clear that names, besides carrying culture and deep, long-standing personal, intellectual, family and historical ties, also give us feelings, such as: a sense of identity, a sense of the country we live in, and a sense of our place in the world.
Without doubt, the key to life and living is language.
Language is the most precious and valuable concept. If language is not right, nothing in life is right, and on the day language came into being, it could not have taken shape without names. That is why the name is one of the most important values of a nation. History is witness that any nation that loses its values will be left an orphan among the nations, and the best respect shown to an orphan is a little food, with conditions attached.
A name is one or more words, used in the grammatical form of a noun, so that a person, an animal or a thing can be known and told apart. A noun can identify a group or a particular class, and at the same time it can be used to identify people or other things.
Our names are a very important part of our identity: they hold deep personal, cultural, family and historical ties. At the same time they give us an important sense of our identity, of the communities we live in, and of our place in the world. In short, names are woven into the roots of our lives. Without names, everything in life becomes confused. That is why occupiers have always turned to changing names: to confuse the other side and to crush the values of existence of the subjugated side.
In language, the name is accepted as an important part of a nation's values of existence. It is a great pity that we all see with our own eyes how, to this day, our language, ancient with its 12,000-year history, our names and the values of our existence are being burned in the fire of ignorance, and how many Kurds, through their own ignorance, stoke this fire!!
In 1961 the late Gîyo Mukuryanî, the great Kurdish writer and linguist, wrote a book called Nawî bêgane le naw zimanî kurdî da ("Foreign names in the Kurdish language"), which was published in Hewlêr. The book speaks about the harm of using foreign names in the Kurdish language, and about how they keep wearing away the Kurdish language and identity.
In this book, Mukuryanî sheds light on the influence of foreign names on the Kurdish language: how they harm the language and the face of society. He shows the importance of protecting Kurdish identity and true Kurdish names, and he gives his support to keeping the Kurdish language standing on its true foundation.
This book is known as an important masterpiece among the scholarly sources on the Kurdish language, and it draws attention to the importance of protecting the Kurdish language and cleansing it of foreign names.
However many books and works of every kind there are on the harmful influence of foreign names on the Kurdish language, they are still too few for our people, because of the fierceness of the fire of ignorance that is burning our language and culture from all four sides.
These few lines above show clearly that throughout history names have been a part of life, and that the peoples who have survived are those who protected their names and held them sacred. So now, more than ever, Kurds are called on to take ownership of Kurdish names.
To put it a little more openly: in life, names are a password (a code) and one of the most important keys to the history and existence of nations. They were set long ago to protect the values of nations' existence, and to recognise nations and tell them apart. Here I want to ask a question:
Would any one of us accept it if someone else came and, under whatever pretext, changed or broke the lock code of their bag? The answer, of course, is no. All this helplessness of ours comes from our ignorance and our lack of awareness. Full stop.
The current state of Kurdish names
We live in a world where change moves very fast; indeed, we live in a time when names and identities are changed every day.
Manipulating names and identities is a threat that changes a society's memories. Rewriting them according to the view of those in power, without respect for a nation's history and cultural truths, aims at destroying that subjugated nation.
Kurds must know that peace and unity come from respecting both history and identities, not from reshaping them to serve narrow political interests.
Kurdistan must protect its names and its historic sites as witnesses to its ancient history, and respect for cultural diversity and shared history must become the foundation of every society that strives for peace and calm.
History cannot be erased by an administrative decision, and identity cannot be reformulated just by changing names, because a name is the story of peoples, the memory of the whole society and the symbol of an ancient nation's existence.
A name is more than letters written on maps. A name holds these meanings within it: the memory, thought, belief, history, struggle and existence of a nation.
In the end, changing names is seen as an attempt to rewrite history and to ignore the struggle of its people.
A state whose aim is to wipe out Kurdish identity and its history will be seen as a serious threat to the survival of cultural and historical heritage.
Sadly, the international organisations and institutions responsible do not take a clear stand against these changes and this forced erasure of Kurdish names and identity, which are part of the history and identity of all peoples.
It is important that the voices of free people are heard, and that their demands to protect a society's memories and its historical works are respected.
Protecting names calls for a high level of awareness from everyone who cares about human rights, cultural diversity and the right to protect identity.
As a very urgent human need, Kurds need serious and organised resistance, so that the identity and history of our cities do not become victims of policies and agendas that are planned and carried out at the expense of our local culture and history.
If today nations that have their own states groan under the great speed of technological progress, the Kurdish nation, besides that pain, also groans under statelessness, under oppression of every kind and from every side, and under the misuse of these technological advances by those in power against Kurdistan.
The harvest of any work is measured at its threshing floor. The state of the Kurdish language in Başûr (Southern Kurdistan) is much better than in the other three parts of Kurdistan: Kurdish has been recognised there for more than a hundred years and has made clear progress, especially after the 1991 uprising, after which the number of institutions serving the Kurdish language grew greatly compared with the years before. Even so, about two years ago, on a Rûdaw TV programme, I saw that in a small town near Şaweyis, in a boys' school, in one class of twenty-six pupils, thirteen boys were named Mihemed!! And this at a time when the religion of Islam has never officially said that non-Arab nations must take Arabic names!! Last summer in Duhok I often heard Kurds call each other EXÎ (Arabic for "my brother") instead of the Kurdish word bira.
These were just two examples from the threshing floor of Başûr. The threshing floors of the other three parts are in even worse ruin, because Kurdish is not an official language in those countries.