Ask a room of young people in North Africa which names sound modern and which sound old. Very often the old ones will be the Amazigh names their grandparents carried, and the modern ones will come from somewhere else: from the East, from Europe, from television.
Nothing about a name is naturally old or new. Itto, Tiziri, Idir, Yuba, Dihya are not less contemporary than any other name. They only sound old because of what we have learned to associate with them.
A name is a small flag
When a family names a child, it says something about who it hopes that child will be, and which world it wants the child to belong to. That is why names change with power. The names that circulate in cities, schools, offices and screens start to feel like the names of success. The names that stayed in the villages start to feel like the names of the past.
This is what cultural alienation looks like in everyday life. Not a dramatic loss, but a quiet shift in taste. We begin to see ourselves through someone else’s eyes, and to find our own sounds a little embarrassing.
It was not only taste
For a long time it was also administration. In Morocco, families reported registrars who refused to write Amazigh names in the civil register, telling parents to choose from approved lists. Human Rights Watch documented such cases in 2009. The rules have since been eased, but a generation of parents learned that choosing an Amazigh name could mean an argument with the state.
Since then a great deal has changed on paper. Morocco’s 2011 constitution made Tamazight an official language, and an organic law in 2019 set out how it should enter schools and public life. Algeria made Tamazight an official language in 2016. Yennayer, the Amazigh new year, is now a public holiday in both countries.
Laws matter. But a law cannot make a name feel beautiful again. That part happens in families.
What our names actually say
Many Amazigh names carry very plain, very old meanings. Tiziri is moonlight. Idir means alive, the one who lives. Some are the names of kings and queens from our long history: Massinissa, who united Numidia; Yuba, the scholar king of Mauretania; Dihya, who led the resistance in the Aurès.
- A name like Tiziri does not belong to the past. It belongs to anyone who looks at the night.
- A name like Idir is a wish that every parent makes, in every language.
- A name like Dihya carries a story of courage that no advertisement can sell.
Modern is not a place
The mistake is to think that modernity lives in one direction on the map. To be modern is to live consciously in your own time, with the tools and questions of your time. You can do that as Tiziri or as anyone else.
The Japanese did not become less modern by keeping Japanese names. The question was never whether our names are old. The question is whether we believe that people like us can shape the future while sounding like ourselves.
A people that is ashamed of its names has already agreed to be translated.
A small, practical freedom
Nobody should be told what to name their child, and that includes being told by activists. The point is not to replace one pressure with another. The point is to notice the pressure at all.
If you are choosing a name one day, listen to the names of your grandparents once more, without the old judgments. You may find that they sound less like the past and more like a promise that was interrupted.
