This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Berber (Etymology) is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
The term Berber is but a variation of the Latin original word Barbarian, earlier in history applied by Romans specifically to their northern hostile neighbors from Germania (modern Germany). The variation is a French one when spelled Berbere and English when spelled Berber. The term appeared first in the 4th century in the religious conflicts between Saint Augustine, a Numidian Berber-Roman bishop of the Catholic faith, and the Donatist allies of the Barbarians, also known as Vandals. The Vandals migrated from Iberia (modern Spain) where they were assailed by the Gauls allied to the Romans, and settled west of the Roman city of Carthage (in modern Tunisia) in the highlands (in modern Algeria).
Amazigh and Berber
Historically, it is not clear how the name "Berber" evolved supposedly from the word βάρβαρος. Contrary to some sources, the Berbers/Imazighen (the Amazighs) were not called barbarians by the Greeks or Romans. The Berbers were known as Libyans (Λίβυες or Λίβυοι) or Mazyes (Μάζυες or Μάξυες; Mazaces in Latin) to the ancient Greeks. They were known under many other names to the Romans as Numidians, Mauri and Moors. The Egyptians called their western neighbors the Mashewsh.
Because the Berbers were called Al-Barbar by the Arabs, it is probable that the modern European languages and other ones adopted it from the Arabic language. The Arabs probably did not use the name Al-Barbar mainly as a negative name. The ancient Arab historians were not aware of the origin of that name, they created some myths or stories about the name. The most notorious myth considers an eponymous Barbar as the ancestor of the Berbers. According to that myth, "the Berbers were the descendants of Ham, the son of Noah, the son of Barbar, the son of Tamalla, the son of Mazigh, the son of Canon" (Ibn Khaldun, The History of Ibn Khaldun, Chapter 3).
The fact that the name Berber is a strange name to the Berbers led to confusion. Some sources claim that the Berbers are several ethnic groups who are not related to each other. That is not accurate, because the Berbers refer to themselves as Imazighen throughout all of North Africa from Morocco to Libya including the Egyptian oasis of Siwa and about half of the Sahara Desert.
Not only is the origin of the name Berber unclear, but also the name Amazigh. The most common explanation is that the name goes back to the Egyptian period when the ancient Egyptians mentioned an ancient Libyan tribe called Meshwesh. Those Meshwesh are supposed by some scholars to be the same ancient Libyan tribe that was mentioned as Maxyans by the Greek historian Herodotus.
Libyans and Numidians
In the Greek period the Berbers were mainly known as Libyans and their land of Libya extended from modern Morocco to the western borders of ancient Egypt. (Modern Egypt contains the Siwa Oasis, historically part of Libya, where the Berber Siwi language is still spoken.)
See also
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 2 September 2008, at 20:48.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Berber (Etymology)".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.