The Colonization of Names

Symbolic Violence and France's Occupation of Algeria
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-0-231-21601-2
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 360 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 528 g

French colonization dismantled Algerian names. Under the occupation that began in 1830, not only were Algerian towns and streets renamed in honor of French figures, but personal names were forced to follow French conventions and norms. Colonial authorities simplified and transformed Algerian names to suit their administrative and legal purposes, crudely transcribing and transliterating Arabic and Berber. They imposed a two-part name and surname model that stripped away the extended family ties and social context inherent to precolonial naming practices.

This groundbreaking history of personal names in nineteenth-century Algeria sheds new light on the symbolic violence of renaming and the relationship between language and colonialism. Benjamin Claude Brower traces the changes Algerians’ personal names suffered during the colonial era and the consequences for individuals and society. France’s imposition of new names, he argues, destabilized Algerians’ sense of self and place in the community, distorted local identities, and compromised institutions such as the family. Drawing on previously unstudied records, Brower examines different northwestern African naming traditions and how colonialism changed them. With the aid of literary and critical theory, he develops new insights into the name and its relationship to power and subjectivity. A rigorous theoretical and historical account of symbolic violence, The Colonization of Names unveils many unseen forms of harm under colonial rule.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Brower, Benjamin

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Afrikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Kolonialismus, Imperialismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Note on Translation and Transliteration
Introduction
1. What Is in a Name?
2. “Tell Me Your Name”: Precolonial Naming Practices in Northwestern Africa
3. “Wherever the Flag Flies”: The État Civil in Algeria: Conquest and Sovereignty, 1780s–1830s
4. “Am I That Name?”: Algerians Make Their Names Known, 1827–1840
5. In Others’ Names: Making the Algerian Name French, 1850s–1870s
6. A Colonial État Civil
Conclusion: Remember Their Names
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Benjamin Claude Brower is associate professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France’s Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844–1902 (Columbia, 2009).