Ethnography of Naming as a Religious Identity: Case of Antakya

Abstract

Antakya is the central district of Hatay Province located in the eastern Mediterranean Region. Once populated by a variety of different ethno-religious communities, today it is still a place where Jewish, Christian, Sunni Muslim, and Arab Alevi (Nusayri) communities live together. This study is aimed at gaining insight into the naming preferences and naming rituals among different religious communities with a comparative perspective.The key question this study seeks to answer is how the religious belief to which people belong affects the names they are given and how the religious community draws a line between "self" and "other" based on the name. Names given to children or avoided as a taboo in different communities give the hints of a faith-based cultural memory a community established with its past. In this study, which is built on ethnography, field study method was utilized, and interviews were conducted with people from different communities. These interviews provided detailed insights into the variables people consider in naming their children, whether or not the religious identity to which they belong is influential in choosing a name, the naming experiences and rituals.

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“…Prior studies in psychology and religion argue that a person's name reflects specific identification, and it can be used to trace people to a certain group such as an ethnic group, religion or nation (Dion, 1983;Dinur et al, 1996;Lauderdale and Kestenbaum, 2000). Research on religions also asserts that Muslims tend to use common Islamic names, extracted from the Holy Quran, the names of the Prophet, the Prophet's companions and Islamic scholars, and use these names as Islamic identification distinguishing them from non-Muslims (Rahman, 2013;S ahin, 2017;Sharma, 2020)[6]. Thus, consistent with Baatwah et al (2018), we consider an AC chair or CEO as a Muslim if he/she carries one of the wellknown Muslim names.…”