As we all know, there is nothing left in our life and existence that we have not given a name. This goes back to our need, and our constant search, to give a name to every thing and every feeling, so that people have a shared language and can understand each other more easily.
In some situations people may be forced to change their language, but it is very rare for them to change the name of the mountain on whose slopes they live, or of the spring they drink from, because these names take their roots from the land and from the old language of its people. To put it more clearly, these names were born from the history of that land, not from any newly created power.
Today too, all across Kurdistan, we have two kinds of names. The first kind: names born from the land of Kurdistan and the language of its people, which carry the people's history, ties and language. The second kind: names created from the seats of newly created powers and put in place of the original names of this land.
This second kind is not only a matter of changing original names and imposing other ones. It is a well-known tool of occupation whose aim is to impose cultural, historical and political domination on that land, to cut the people's ties with their culture and history, and in the end to wipe out that people's identity altogether. Experts and specialists in this field confirm that it contains the five aims set out below.
1- Erasing the identity of that people
A name carries language, history and belonging. When a name is changed, it weakens the people's link to their memory and their past, and over time it cuts them off from their social roots. At this point the occupier can easily recast that people in the mould he wants and define them anew. This means that if weapons kill the human body, changing a name kills history, language, belonging and social memory.
2- Legitimising the occupation
Changing the names of cities, villages, mountains, and even the name of the people of that land itself, serves to spin a new story about the existence and history of that land, to present to new generations as the origin of the place. In this way the true origin will be buried.
3- Breaking the bond between people and land
When original names are banned, people feel like strangers in their own homeland, because original names are all social signs and symbols that give people a sense of belonging and continuity. This is just one example of hundreds carried out through administrative measures, and the aim of all of them is that the native people of a place become guests in their own home and are left without their true social signs and symbols.
4- Imposing a new story
The occupier never stops at military domination alone. He goes on to write a new history and impose his own language, creating new concepts and a new identity for future generations, until it becomes the reality of that people's life.
5- Weakening that people's resistance in the future
Any nation that does not know its names, its language and its history will easily be subjugated, and of course at the same time its unity will be very hard to achieve. In short, changing the names of a subjugated people is not just an innocent administrative measure; it is a plan of symbolic violence to wipe out that people's culture, without the occupier needing to destroy them physically.
Changing the names of villages and cities means hiding and besieging the history of that place. Today, all across Kurdistan, in different areas of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, thousands of names of Kurdish places, villages and cities have been given Turkish, Persian and Arabic names. These newly made names are now the ones in use on maps, and the original names of the areas are banned!! To give a few examples:
Dersîm became Tunceli, Urmiye became Rezaiyeh, Dîlok became Gaziantep … and so on.
According to research that has been carried out and confirmed, the results of these changes are as follows:
- In Turkey, 28,000 names (Kurdish, Armenian, Greek and Syriac) have been changed.
- In Iran, no fewer than 2,000 Kurdish names have been changed to Persian.
- In Syria and Iraq, no fewer than 800 Kurdish names have been Arabised.
Besides the names of places, villages, cities and regions, the name of the Kurdish people itself was changed too. In Turkey they were called "Mountain Turks"; in Syria, Kurds used to be named foreigners, migrants and people without identity; in Iran, Kurds are presented as people without rights and without identity. The aim of these same policies, in four different countries around Kurdistan, is to separate the Kurds from their history, because the occupier knows well that a nation that loses its name will, in the future, be forced to demand that its existence be proven and recognised. In short, and in plain English: names that have existed for thousands of years mean that the life of that people has continued in that place. They mean that the people of that land have every historical right, and the right of existence, in that place, and these rights can never be denied.
Researchers and specialists in this field agree on this order of antiquity and existence of the peoples, and on the codes these peoples used to give names in Northern Mesopotamia:
The order of antiquity and existence of the peoples who were the ancestors of the Kurds in Northern Mesopotamia through history (for your information: the areas of Zaxo, Duhok and Mosul were the centre of the Hurrian and Mitanni civilisation):
- Subartu – 2500–1500 BC: the oldest mountain people in this region.
- Hurrians – 2300–1300 BC: a settled civilisation.
- Mitanni – 1500–1300 BC: a Hurrian state.
- Medes – 700–550 BC: a Kurdish empire.
- The Kurdish nation of today and the peoples within it.
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All the research done on Northern Mesopotamia confirms that no name was given at random; the opposite is true. All the old names were given according to clear and definite patterns, all linked to language, geography, religion and political power. Following the Hurrian and Mitanni patterns, let us explain a few of the keys and codes they used to name places, cities and natural features.
A few suffixes linked to places (location suffixes): -ta, -wa, -na, -uk, -ki … and so on.
A few prefixes linked to natural, high and visible places: za-, zak-, zaw- … and so on.
Now let us take three examples of Hurrian and Mitanni names:
1- Zaxo – Zakho – Zakha – Zakhika
This old name has been found several times on clay tablets from the Hurrian/Mitanni period, and it has been explained like this:
- Za— this is the naming code for high and visible places, meaning (a high place, a height, visible and prominent).
- Kho— in the Hurrian language, and on into the early Iranian languages, means (water, river, riverbank and shore).
Meaning of Zaxo: high place and riverbank.
2- Zawîta
Its parts show that it is a Hurrian/Mitanni name:
- Za: a code for naming high places.
- Wi: in the Hurrian/Mitanni language means (water, life).
- Ta: a common Hurrian suffix, used to mark places and locations.
Meaning of the name Zawîta: the high place with water.
3- Zagros
Its parts show that it is a Hurrian/Mitanni name.
- Za: the Hurrian/Mitanni code for naming high and visible places, meaning (a high, visible place, a mountain).
- Gros: means (great, long, chain).
Meaning of Zagros: (a chain of mountains, or heights one after another).
These few lines I have written are only a few headlines of the research that specialists in this field have carried out on the past of our grandmothers and grandfathers in Northern Mesopotamia. Their purpose is to make clear the importance of original Kurdish names, and all the hardship that has come, and still comes, upon Kurdish names, in the hope that from now on we will all be more alert to protecting our original names.
A name can be changed, but it cannot be erased.