Kamal Mezoued is a Kabyle born and raised up in Algeria. For the last 15
years he has been leaving in France where he works as a “specialised
educator”(1) He relates here the stormy story of his family’s name.

“Ask my “mum”; she’ll undoubtedly tell you that my name is
‘Kamal At-Aissa’.

In Kabyle country, the Northern mountainous region of Algeria, where I was born, this means “Kamal descendant of Aissa‘ (2). We Kabyles are one many other Berber people disseminated in North-Africa. Do not confuse us with Arabs, we have a different origin and language. My family’s name is Kabyle and not Arab.

So my name was then Kamal At-Aissa until the day where everything changed:
it was for my first day at school. This happened in 1975, I was only 6 but
I recall this event as if it was yesterday.

The teacher was reading from the list of names when he pronounced ‘Kamal
Mezoued’, I did not react. I was totally foreign to that name; however I
was in the right seat. My second surprise that day, was that all my
comrades had new names. They had one thing in common; their names all
started with the letter ‘M’. First, I thought it was a new game. After
all, my friends had changed their names too! May be that was the way things
were at school? However with time, the question remained… Why should I
change my name? Why I have been called Kamal Mezoued? What became to Kamal
At-Aissa? I asked my mother for explanations, she was not able to answer.
Like all the members of my village, she continued to call me Kamal
At-Aissa. I found myself with two family names!

I started to get confused. In addition, the spelling changed according to
the school teacher, even the pronunciation of my new name changed each
time. Some used to spell it ‘Mezoud’, some others ‘Mezouad’, if
not ‘Merzoud’. It was a little bit complex. I slowly accepted this new
name and even began to defend it. I was very careful to see that it was
spelled correctly :“ me-zou-ed”. One day –at last – an old man
from my villaged explain the reason for that brutal change of identity.
During the 19th century at the time of the conquest of Algeria, France
created a network of Arab offices (3). The initial goal was to create
contact between French authorities and the native population. The French
needed to get closer to the population, hence to understand its language,
its culture and its political system in order to be able to better control
it. Slowly these offices were given additional tasks more administrative
tasks; hence they created an additional legal system, collected tax and
take charge of family statistics(4). This last point is of outmost
importance for us, since they participated to the ‘arabisation’ of
Kabylia. As I pointed out, Kabyle as a branch of the Berber language is
not related to Arabic. But, Kabyles were constantly revolting against the
French occupation, especially during the 1871’s revolt (5).
Transforming Kabyles into Arabs had certain advantages among them, getting
rid of this identity and breaking up its natural solidarity and cohesion.
In the course of this operation, villages, places , family names were
systematically replaced by Arab names(6). Often fanciful and eccentric
ones as attested by my grand father’s story.
My great grand father, when he went to office in change, was carrying a
“water skin” which in Arabic is called a ‘mezoued’. The officer in
charge didn’t need to reflect very long before finding an Arabic name for
him…And since that da, on my family’s identity documents and tombstones
has been ‘mezoued’. Except in my village where my family is still
called At-Aissa.
And then you migh ask ‘what about all my other Kabyle comrades, why all
their new Arabic names started with an ‘M’? Simply because it had
decided that all the newly-declared Berbers from the same village should
have an Arabic name starting with the same letter. It was as simple as
that.
Text: Kamal Mezoued.
Images: Gilles Roqueplo
Source : arte

(1) In France the term ‘éducateur specialisé’ refers to a very
specific job where an educator is in charge of young people, or those with
educational problems.
(2) AT or AIT in Berber refers to the enlarged family, a famous French
actress from Kabyle origin is Marie-Josée NAT.
(3) The infamous “bureaux arabes”. At the same time the very
secularized France prohibited any (re)evangelization of the indigenous
people, who were not allowed to get French citizen ship if Muslim. All of
which led to the separation of Berbers of Jewish origin, who were given
French citizenship, from the non-Jewish Berbers with whom they had lived
for a thousand years.
4) Genealogical records such as birth certificates, marriage licenses
were absent in the autonomous Kabyle territory.
5) The French were so upset by the Kabyle population that some were
displaced to New Caledonia (a French Territory close to New Zealand)
leading to a legend of ‘Arabs of New Caledonia.’
6) Please see the interview of the Kabyle politician ‘Rachid Kaci’ on
http://www.c-e-r-f.org/fao-065.htm, where we learn that currently in France
young Berbers are taught the Arab language. In fact the teachings were
anything but linguistic and cultural: teachers – appointed by
representative of Algeria and Morocco consulates- taught the Arabic
language using the Koran. These teachings had the support of the French
state and the full “cooperation” of North-African (and Arab) states.

Translated by Lazare for kabylia.info