Diversity is overrated. Alot of actual Africans in Africa would prefer a united African state, the only reason there is none is because Africans are also the least empowered people in the world. And oh, when I say "Africa" I mean Sub Saharan Africa only. And before you say it, yes, it's ironic, but that's word everyone most associates with this part of the world.
@@devingunnels3251 it applies to every continent you anencephalic twat. The only ones it doesn’t apply to are Australia, which is so small it was nearly monocultural even before the colonizers, and Antarctica, where no one fucking lived except penguins.
Historically, no native people named their land based on their skin color; such names were usually given by foreigners. For instance, the Arabs named Sudan, the Greeks named Ethiopia, and the Berbers named Guinea. Moreover, naming the entire continent solely as the land of blacks is not fully accurate, as North Africa is predominantly not dark-skinned, not to mention the linguistic diversity of the region.
You reminded me that one time where some extremists accused north Africans in the internet to not be "real" Africans because we didn't have black skin and said that we were arabs that have taken over the land,
@@iburuma3621 how can archeology show that people had a dark skin? Beside drawings there's no way to prove that using archeology and even drawing can't be trusted because people take some artistic all the time
@@croixfadas Yeah, 4000 years is long enough for a population to change its physical appearance. That doesnt mean they arent native, or at least been there long enough they might as well be.
Kinda ironic coming from a web with Viking pfp I hope u know they’re the biggest grapist in Europe and mainly bunch of babarians not even matched to beat native Americans that didn’t have Iron Age and Leif Erickson couldn’t even leave a inprint till Vikings meatriders spend millions to discover a dirty boat in the Americas
@@silusmkhwananzi3121 you are free to call anything what ever you want, literally no one cares.. in fact neither do you, when have you ever called africa this??? Like i say you are free to do that but we are all free to call it stupid
The problem with the Idea that Africa should have a native name is to the contrary of Afro Centrism. Africa has and probably will never be a united land of one people. Its a land full of different people, tribes and languages. Which language should be chosen then? Should it be the largest spoken? Should it be the oldest? How do you pick one that represents the whole continent.
Even the UK wasn't united until King James🇬🇧 He wasn't English, but Scottish. However, he insisted on English over Scottish or Welsh, as their language🇬🇧 Welsh & Scottish, sound nothing like English
what language should be chosen? english. even in ASEAN, the official language is english, not malaysian or indonesian despite it has the largest speaker.
I'm sorry but the native name of Antarctica is Kwaknoot, named after the great penguin Pharaoh Kwaknoot III., who once unified the lands under penguin rule. (i'll show myself out, thank you very much)
As a native Arabic speaker. The word Kebul -كبل- means tied using chains, so the name might refer to slaves, or the slave market docks in the east of Africa. The word land however isn't a part of the word, "an" is a suffix used to indicate more or the fullness of something (like "ful") TL;DR Al-Kebulan = The Chainful
Considering how antidemocratic many of the pan Africanist leaders are not surprising. Also I thought the suffix -an could double as either the accusative case marker or the اً part after an adjective
I have dug in it and yes, it might be the case. Earliest mention I could find was about 1813, by a spanish book called "La Iberiada. Poema Épico Á la Gloriosa Defensa de Zaragoza", which mentoins several ways nations around the world call Africa. It says that arabs called it Alkebulan. Many texts after simply copied that part, like an English dictionary from 1925. Funniest thing is that arabs might never called it like that, because alongside Alkebulan book mentions, that indians called Africa as Besecath. It doesn't make sense, because Besecath is a hebrew word.
This is not true. The original spelling is alkebu-lan, which is not an Arabic word at all. Also, Arabic came about with Islam in the 6th-7th centuries during Arab colonization, so how can the original name of the African continent be an Arabic word when Africa predates this period?! People just make up anything.
@@rickmarshall5419 Alkebu-lan firstly appears in 1940s and it sounds absolutely nothing like any african language. Again, the Iberiada hypothesis (read above) much stronger, because a) Alkebulan is a real-ish word and b) ones, who firstly use, it attribute it as a synonym for Africa
@@rickmarshall5419 The name Alkebulan is an Arabic word given by and for Arabs to Africa. It isn't the African name for the African continent, and I never said that it was. I also have no idea where you got the spelling Alkebu-lan from, but I'd like to know.
Africa is too large and has too many language families to have one singular endonym. Probably, many endonyms for every language family or every language.
@@alitheia_It being diverse, that's my point. How else do you get people from a continent that big with so many cultures to agree to what to call Africa? Everyone would need, want, a seat at the table.
And even those would be recent, post-colonialism. A Bantu in 14th century Kongo would have no idea they lived in a recognizable landmass, and would laugh at the idea that there was a word that could describe his land, a Khoi-San's land, an Amazigh's land, an Chadian's land... all at the same time. (I mean, he would laugh if he knew those other peoples even existed...)
And even those are recent inventions, because when those languages were developing they had no idea they were living in that specific landmass. They knew the region they lived and neighbouring ones, and that was it.
At the end of the day, the whole concept of continents having names is quite recent in history. Most people in the world were not really able to be concerned with much beyond their own borders and the borders of their immediate neighbors. Unless you were nomadic or a trader, the world effectively ended a hundred miles from your home, and stories of places beyond that distance might as well have been a dream.
That's for the common people but there has been names for continents pretty much since antiquity. The Bible and Greek myths recognize the difference between Europe Asia and Africa. Obviously a much more Mediterraneocentric and small Europe Africa and Asia XD but they were there. And I wouldn't say 3000 years is little. But a certain thing is... I'm pretty sure nobody really cared about what the name was. I mean Europa was a zoophilic girlfriend of Zeus so... Only important thing is... Theres a bunch of land over here, a bunch of land over there, and another bunch of land over there (and then they found another bunches of land waaaaay over there)
@@morgan0 it has 2 meanings, worshiper and slave, a lot of muslims have "abd" in their name like for example "abd allah" which means "worshiper of god" meanwhile the word abd for slave is used by racists in the Arabic speaking world to mock black people, it's also used in sudan although majority of Sudanese people is black but it's still used there by light skinned people to mock dark skinned people
if you around hoteps you hear this word a lot. someone gave me a map of Africa upside down and it was titled "Alkebulan". They say thats the "original" name for Africa but it sounds VERY arabic. It sound like an exonym.
Europe's name is of Asian origin and vice-versa because they never needed to refer to their own continent, only the other one. We have a tendency to cobble together all the "others" in a single homogeneous group.
Just clicked on the video, but I don't imagine there's very many traditional (pre colonization, including Roman) native names for Africa because it's so big. Different areas of the continent, sure, but not the landmass as a whole.
Yeah, we run into the same issue when asking what the Pre-Columbian, native name for America. (Didn't Patric make a video on that?). It hinges on the idea that said natives thought of this landmass as a defined area that needed a name. Which is not a given, divisions like that are somewhat arbitrary and context-dependent.
It was not just the trans-Atlantic slave trade that took people away from Africa. There was a thriving trans-Saharan slave trade run by Arabs that lasted much longer than the European slave trade. One of the reasons the Arab slave trade is overlooked is that male slaves were routinely castrated while the half-Arab, half-African offspring of the female slaves ended up being absorbed into Arab society so that there was no opportunity for a separate African-Arab population to build up.
Today, males are being castrated....also, they used to castrate males in the middle ages Alto, was high male Because of castrati Alto, means HIGH The castrati
looking into it some more, it seems that in total, the trans-saharan slave trade took half or fewer people. 7-10 million in total vs 12 not counting those who died before, during, or after. and that’s over 1300 vs 400 years. so in terms of the cost to african civilizations, the trans-atlantic slave trade was far more significant.
@@dan8910100 12 does not count those who died along the way, which afaik was quite a lot. but only a small amount of rounding up to 14 does make it twice 7, which seemed to be the more accepted figure for the trans-saharan slave trade
The most offensive things I find with Afrocentrism amongst African Americans is not hatred towards white people but thinking Africa is one unified entity like one nation rather than just a geographic continent with the largest diversities of ethnicities, cultures and even genetics on earth. That shows that most African Americans are basically just like most other westerners from the colonized America today: being obsessed with thinking everyone's unified based on appearances and "race". In fact, America is more unified than Africa due to being heavily rooted in dominating colonialism as the native population was almost mostly replaced entirely. Like in any other non-American continents, different African ethnicities and nationalities don't see each other the same like Americans do just because they share similar skin color. Most of them sees African Americans like any other Americans for sharing the basic westernized American values and mostly sees Africans the same for their appearances.
Well that's kind of what happens when you've been striped of all ancestry and history, and accepted what you've been taught by the mainstream culture for a couple hundred years. Then you use that incomplete knowledge to cobble together some semblance of a "culture." It's human nature to believe that everyone does it the way you do; whether it's Europeans believing that every American (North or South) does everything the same way, every white American believing that everyone in America does things the same way, or whether it's every black American who believes that everyone who is black in America shares the same cultural values just because they are black. Then extending that to every dark skinned person, regardless of culture. Sometimes to the point of calling others not "black enough" if they have practices outside of the cultural norm. In truth it's all imagined and short sighted, but when confronted with the truth it's easier to believe what fits their narrative of the "motherland". There is the dream of the motherland---and going back to a time when our people were something, in a country where we were free, and lived in harmony, until the white man stole us. However, just like those "good, old days" I often hear folks talking about, both scenarios are historically inaccurate and downright fantasy.
@@SomethingBeautifulHandcrafts In reality, Africa was probably rife with intertribal wars like in my country. 😅 If I remember correctly, some black tribe chiefs actually sold members of the rival tribe to the Europeans?
@@WannzKaswan In fact, that was the practice. Not boogey man white man from Europe with a net snatching African children. Instead, the strongest slaver kingdoms started being more aggressive so they could secure a monopoly on slave trade with Europeans in exchange for goods like guns, which they'd use to capture even more slaves, in a vicious cycles. An infamous example is the kingdom of Kongo. Their kings formed deep ties with the Portuguese and became a local hegemon in the Congo, using European weaponry to secure a steady supply of slaves to trade It's fucking brutal, all because of the greed of empire, millions died either crossing the atlantic or toiling to death in foreign shores
@@SomethingBeautifulHandcrafts It's a tragedy to see so many people live in a ficticious fantasy of a "gone great past" instead of living in the present and building an actually real worthwhile future.
@@SomethingBeautifulHandcrafts It has an alarming similarity to historic revisionism in europe. The way some afrocentrists talk about the lighter-skinned north african population eerily reminds me about german rhetoric against poles ("We were there before them, they stole our land, they falsly claim our cultural achievments as their own" etc.). The horribly inaccurate Netflix documentary about Cleopatra really highlights this ideology.
Talking about a "native name" (singular) of Africa makes as much sense as talking about a "native name" (singular) of our planet... Is it "Terra"? Is it "Earth"? Is it "Zeme"? Is it "Föld"? Is it "Toprak"?...
Africa is a western name. The importance of a continent in terms of identity is a western concept. Pan-Africanism is a western concept. Even pan-Europeanism is a western concept, firstly because it's not a real continent, but also because identity attached to a continent is idiotic. In a continent there are various religions, cultures and ethnicities who have nothing in common with your own. A Houthi and a Chinese person are not the same because they are both in Asia. A Moroccan and a Zimbabwean aren't the same because they are both in Africa. While regional integration is good, pan-Africanism is brainrot.
Pan africanism is an anticolonial ideology that exists to unite disparaging people's with the same conditions. The idea doesn't claim they are the same but that they have a similar experience and should unite against it
Saying Africa used to have a native name is like saying Asia had a native name. Just completely ignores the fact that it's a large continent with many cultures.
The only reason Europe might have a native name is because it’s incredibly small. However I honestly see no reason Europe should be considered a different continent than Asia
@@capadociaash8003 because some thousand odd years ago a bunch of rich people got together and said “clearly we’re different from THOSE people over THERE” and dictated that maps would say as much. And we humans fucking ADORE scripting our own lives and the lives of others in accordance to what some dead shitheel had to say when they were alive.
i’m not surprised there’s never been a united native name for Africa given how diverse the continent is. the idea is just another product of colonization and ethno monolith beliefs that only harm the perception of multiple cultures and its respective countries
Of course, the real test for if Alkebulan becomes the new name for Africa is if people start using it that way. There is a non-zero chance that in 100 years, some linguist will make the equivalent of a YT video. "Did you know the name Alkebulan (which now everybody uses), is really based on a folk etymology?" I mean, I do agree with Patric that a name with a solid foundations in native languages would be preferable. But that raises further questions. Like: "Which native language, exactly?" And of course, that is just my opinion, and I am not even from Africa myself. (Though I did live there for five years as a child, thinking of Tanzania as my second home, so not completely lacking skin in this game.)
Linguistics is a very new so called science. So it’s not everything on languages. Its etymology is, applying their rules is GUNES DIL, which is very ancient Turkish tribes called as the Sun People.
@@Fluoman_ Well, I think that comes off as more... respectful, for lack of a better word. To put it simply, that's how I would like it if I where from Africa.
@@mattisvov I'm pretty sure nobody in Austria (österreich: the empire in the east) cares that the land was named, evidently, not by natives. It isn't obvious at all that people would care about the name other people give to their country/continent unless deliberately insulting, which Africa is not.
@@Fluoman_ Well, of course. But the very topic of this video implies that there are people who very much would like rename Africa. Which is understandable. Unlike say Austria, Africa have been the victim of colonization, so an exonym may hold a different konnotation to people. However, I am not saying I think these people necessarily are in a majority, or that a name-change would ever come to pass. There things tend to be decided by historical inertia.
It reminds of the nationalistic use of Maharlika to refer to the Philippines, despite the problems that arise when you look into the background of such a term
@@lockecole4894In regards to the use of Alkebulan, I’ve only ever seen in used in small Facebook communities back in 2014 and as a fun fact here and there
I honestly don't think there could have even been one. I mean, i think that in antiquity the Egyptians new of everything up to modern somalia in east africa and about the north african coast, but I don't think anyone, not even africans, knew about the entire continent.
@@malegria9641 they had two competing names for it: Ethiopia for the people living there and Libya for the fact it was pretty clearly the same land mass as what they knew before their voyage of what Libya was. Note the account of the voyage was translated into Greek so the Punic names for the regions were different
The problem with a United native African name is the exact same problem the Native Americans have if they proposed the same idea, both groups were never united under a single idea for many millennia, both groups on both continents were split in their own respective cultures and tribes and frequently fought wars over each others resources and land, which the losing side would often be sold into slavery if the winning side practiced the institution, which many of them did.
It can be said the same for Erope but it was much more bigger and lasted for much longer - biggest wars in history were of Eropean, ie, WW1, WW2, Cold War and Fast forward: Russian against Ukraine/NATO. So outsiders name the “continent.”
@@Egr-et6ar The name was adopted by the Romans from the Greeks, naturally spreading from Romance to Germanic languages. Africa is much bigger and has more rugged terrain, so names for the continent (for the people who even thought that it was a seperate landmass, which would only be VERY adventurous traders at the time), it could not be adopted by other groups on the continent.
@@tectagon Europa, Europe comes from the Phoenician word EROB, meaning where the sun set (west of Phoenicia,west of Bosphorus, Sea of Marmora). Erebo: I go under.
Not even Africa started out as a term for all of Africa. There couldn't have been a native term until at least one group of people was aware of the whole land mass. In a nutshell, you could try to dig if for example 16th century Ethiopia had one, as they probably had access to Portuguese maps. But that wouldn't have been any more universal than Africa to begin with.
Well, the concept of continents itself is European in its nature. What is and is not a continent and the boundaries separating them are mostly arbitrary. I would say that it is impossible to give a single name to something as big as a continent while accurately representing all the different cultures of the land.
Right..... One could argue that Europe, Africa and Asia make one super continent since it's all connected. Many people already view Asia and Europe as Eurasia. Continents are social constructs
Not mentioned in this piece is the fact that the term Africa might in fact BE NATIVE! Don't forget that the Ancient Egyptians existed BEFORE the Ancient Greeks and before the Romans, and so, the reason why those two cultures gave the land to the south of the Mediterranean the name of Africa might ultimately go back to Egypt.
@@MugukuThumari.777 Not necessarily so. It is possible that the language spoken by the Egyptians could have originated in Africa, and migrated north. Do not confuse skin color with ancestry or language, which is what you seem to be doing. No, the Egyptians are not black Africans, but that does NOT mean that they are not African.
I found this name interesting, so I looked into it a bit more. A few things I discovered: -The name appeared in a song title (Alkebulan Land of the Blacks) on the 1972 Jimmy Heath jazz album "The Gap Sealer". -The passage that pops up most often when you search 'Alkebulan' on the internet comes from the book "Black Man of the Nile and his Family" by Yosef Ben-Jochannan (1972), but the author provides no sources or footnotes. -The earliest known appearance of the name comes from the book Cosmographie Universelle (1575) by André Thevet in the legend of his map of Africa. The legend reads: "Having described the kingdoms, provinces, mountains, rivers, gulfs and promontories of this part of the world which we call AFRICA, the Greeks [called] Lybia, and the Arabs [called] Alkebulan ..." The only other sources I saw using the name were also from French books. -There is a region in the north of Algeria called Kabylia, which is a distortion of the Arabic qaba'il which either means "the tribes" or "to accept". The Arabs, after the conquest of the Maghreb, used the word to refer to local populations that accepted Islam. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that Alkebulan could have been a 16th century French corruption of "al qaba'il".
Africa is a native name too contrary to popular belief it's not named by Romans it's a native name the Romans heard but yeah it was the name of North only
Technically its the name that the Romans gave to the area around Carthage. Thus Scipio Africanus, the conquor of the Africans. Later on it was expanded more and more to apply to the whole continent.
@@nziom that's more or less what I said. The Romans called the area around Carthage Africa. Therefore, when Publus Cornelius Scipio won a big victory there they added the conquor of Africa to his name.
This is just a minor mistake, but I kept noticing that the main map you use for Africa doesn't show Tunisia. Interestingly, the old Roman province of Africa was mostly Tunisia (the borders weren't exactly the same, but close enough).
This was very interesting, although I’d make the contribution that the name Africa is also believed to derive from that of a native Amazigh group in what is now Tunisia, being used by the Romans to refer to the area. As Europeans encountered more of the continent over time, it gradually came to refer to the entire landmass.
its called Abibrem in twi but most African languages just call it a variant of Africa. some have unique names for Europe and other continents for some reason i think people in west Africa and the horn of Africa and some other parts of east Africa probably knew about continents. but i also think some parts like in southern Africa and central Africa really didn't know what was going on on the other side of the continent and just assumed Africa was the entire world .
These new age "native" names for continents are not only stupid but baseless, just like when some tribes in the Americas tried forcing Abya Yala as a new name for the entire continent when it was barely used by like one tribe in Panama
@@stefanstruger9949 Colonizers? The traditional story is that in the year 711, an oppressed Christian chief, Julian, went to Musa ibn Nusair, the governor of North Africa, with a plea for help against the tyrannical Visigoth ruler of Spain, Roderick. Musa responded by sending the young general Tariq bin Ziyad with an army of 7000 troops.
My woke sister scolded me for saying Africa and told me about this. I immediately called bullshit since her claim was that it was in universal use in pre colonial Africa, from north to south. It made absolutely no sense for all the different tribes with completely different languages to get together and come up with a name like that.
Don't worry, she's probably a white woman. She's allowed to be racist. As long as we brown people are used as their shields. They are fine with being racist towards us.
@@redmage5251I mean “somebody says something stupid and argues with a person better versed in the topic” isn’t an unrealistic prompt. If OP made this up they’re good at making it seem real.
@@redmage5251 This isn't a reddit moment or whatever the hell you're thinking. This is more like a legit conversation he had with their sister. No other specifics is mentioned.
02:30 There is a theory that the name Europe comes from the river Evros (greek, Maritsa in Bulgarian, since thats where it starts today). The thracian lands were called Europe and subsequently that name expanded to the whole continent, rather than the Balkan peninsula.
Complaining about a continent name not being named form the people who lived there originally is stupid, especially if it turns out no continent was named by the original inhabitants
Honestly, every language has its own name for other races or countries. Africa is this places English name, as it is called "Afurika" in Japanese or "Apeulika" in Korean.. So if you are an african and your specific language has a specific name for "Africa" then of course it makes sense to call it that.. Like here in South Africa, we use a Xhosa word to refer to South Africa called "Mzansi" which might be an informal name but no one bats an eye if it is used, I personally love it
(2:20) Now, Australia, as you shown isn't a continent, that's the country. The continent is usually called Oceania. Australia is the main landmass, of course, but just like other continents, the island are considered part of the continent. Not that Oceania is from native origin anyway.
As an algerian I just don't like africosentrism because it gives a fake idea that Africa is just one culture and this is totally false africa is extremely rich with cultures and it's a shame that we talk about one culture for a hole continent. Also I confirm that alkebulan is not Arabic I would translate it to ard al soud personally and the fact that it has an e in it's name stinks even more (case arabic only has 3 vowels a u i)
Snibo, you clearly don’t know Afro-centric thought. I know of no scholar who argues that Africa is one culture. Just like you Arabs are not all one culture. Rather, Afrocentrists argue that these varied cultures emanate from one stream. Similar to followers of Islam being many cultures but all basing themselves on the principles of Quran & Sunnah. The stream we refer to is Kemet, Arabs call the same land Mizr & the Greeks before them called it Egypt. The inhabitants themselves knew it as Kmt, or the Land of the Blacks. Eurosceptics and Mr Z Hawass, concur black is integral in the name Kmt, but deviously suppose that it refers to the black land (ie fertile soil); but the Medu Netcher (Hieroglyphs to the uninformed) establishes that the word designates the people and not just the land. The complete disregard for the temples, pyramids & sculpture of Kmt, in the Quran proves that this land was not peopled by Arabs or other Semitic/ Caucasians. It is this certainty and our insistence in proclaiming the Kemetic stream that infuses every African language, culture and people we study. So why hate us? Wouldn’t it be better for you to trace your lineage back to those white slave markets of North Africa, and find your roots back in Serbia/ Albania than chastise us for doing this Godly work of resurrecting our true memory from the hands of racists.
@@Ibnafrika I did not understand a lot of what you have said because you used too much terms that I didn't have but I'll assume that all that you said is real. Who cares about ethnicity. Arguing about that is just fighting a lost battle, human population movements have happened all over the history and saying who's the most legitimate of that land. Like in Europe most people are not from there but they are actually Indo-Europeans so if they go back long enough in time you will see that they originate from around iran or Pakistan. No you won't say that or let's just go and say that everyone is from Ethiopia and we are all Africans! No no one will ever say that. Maybe instead of fighting about your ethnicity make people understand your culture better. I know that had been shattered by colonization but it's still there and you better communicate that to people instead of bragging about your origine.
@@snibo1024 'As an Algerian' you started this thread and now 'Who cares about ethnicity?'. Can you not see your words do not match? Everybody wishes to preserve a socio-cultural memory. Everybody chooses to begin their memory where they prefer. Today, although Algerians live in Africa they align themselves to a land/ people (Arabia) that they might have originated from. (Although the white flesh slave markets of North Africa might disagree).
As someone from black africa, i agree. North africans are native to north africa, just as sub-saharan africans are native to sub-saharan Africa. However confusion is created due to historical events. For example, many blacks claim to be the ancient Egyptians, but it is actually the coptics, berbers and early levantines who are native to ancient Egypt, all groups who could be considered white. However, muslim arabs are not native to ancient egypt either, creating confusion. To assuage this confusion, i think real history should be taught rather than bastardized history like that one netflix “documentary”
@@user-ci2fd8vc2f if you were talking about that movie where Cleopatra is black in it, yeah that's bull shit she wasn't even from Egypt in originally she's from greece they had no reason doing that besides of "inclusivity"
you forgot to mention under the list of people exploiting africa, the even longer running islamic slave trade in which african men where castrated so that they didn't have any children, which is why you don't see "african arabians" in the same amount that you see american people of african origin. Mind you also that this trade started before the atlantic slave trade and never stopped, though did shift from the Middle East to Tunisia and other North African islamic countries who in themselves are the result of Arab imperialism. ok I guess you referenced it in passing but not really the exploiting part
Africa has hundreds of tribes and ethnicities, each with its own language and NONE had prior knowledge of the continent's existence. They only named their lands, the lands of their own people... So, considering a native name would be even more arbitrary than continuing to use the name Africa, which has been part of the continent's identity for millennia...
Honestly, I really like how you were so respectful during this video, I feared way worse. The only thing I disliked is the use of the term "afrocentric" because ethnocentrism is the idea that one's ethnicity is better than others and basing the value of the others' cultures on one's own; in the context of afrocentrism, it would to believe cultures and people who aren't African are lesser. Those who believe in the Alkebulan name theory don't think so, at least the majority doesn't. The definition you gave for afrocentrism is an old one which has sadly gone now and the one I explained has obviously a negative stigma attached to it because everyone who hears this, even Black people, thinks afrocentrists are ahistorical or racist or both. The absurd thing is that the old definition is at times used with the intent others will associate it with the newer one to discredit the "afrocentrists". This association has led people to come up with the term "afrocentricity", "afrocentricic" and "afrocentricist" to disassociate from the other terms. It's also really weird how the term afrocentrism is thrown around so oftenly even though we live in a eurocentric world while the term eurocentrism is barely used Anyways, about the video idea about native names for the American double continent, I'm pretty sure Turtle Island is a pretty famous one, but not Zēmānāwac/Sēmānāwac (if you wanna research about it you prolly have to write it as Cemanahuac (whether with or without macron), I use an orthography I came up with myself to write Nāwatl, or rather more Mēxihcatlahtōlli/Mēxihcacopa since Nāwatl is a language branch just like Semitic and not a language and there isn't a standardized orthography anyhow), which is the name given to the region of the known earthly world of the Mēxihcah (Aztēcah): Mesoamerica (which isn't the same as Central America btw). But because it was their whole world it could also be used for the Americas
If Europeans didn’t colonize Africa in the 19th century, it still likely wouldn’t have developed significantly for much of the soil is unfit for long term sustained agriculture, the cultural and linguistic diversity makes it hard to establish large centralized states (without genocide of fellow Africans) and beforehand, much of Africa was still tribal or in the iron age, and those lands which did have centralized states often utilized large scale slavery which long predated European arrival and which many African leaders wished to keep in place even as European powers like the British sought to end slavery. Slavery likely would’ve continued both from local kingdoms and from Arab slave merchants and with that, all of the harmful effects on social development that it brings
To be fair. The land would be developed. But not in the european idea of development. Part of the reason why the Eastern Woodlands of North America was so easy for the Europeans to colonize was because the native peoples actively cleared out the underbrush but let the trees remain. Creating an open and clear enviroment that made hunting and traveling through the forests relatively easy. Their version of a highway. Many Europeans thought that it was oddly suspicious that everything was so easy for them, and attributed it to God blessing their endeavors. But the reality was they were benefiting from the infrastructure the natives had cultivated without really realizing it. I'm not saying natives were some fancy nature warrior, noble savages. Just that their systems of using and exploiting the land looked very different from how Europeans did it, and because of that the Europeans said they had little to none when they really had an advanced continent spanning system of forest paths, trade networks, and horticulture.
Named White Thinks White Writes Wrong. Your suppositions are in your own head. You believe in your bedroom you can synthesise an entire timeline of what may have happened had your Cherished forbears not savaged and ravaged a people who did them no harm. Whose civility caused them wherever you look, caused them to welcome these haggard string haired strangers from the water. These children of Mami Wata. Pontificate all you want, it will never absolve the guilt you inherently hold in your heart. I hope this will help you in your quest to feel whole.
Right! Why would my people worry about large farms? My tribe lived on the Chesapeake bay/Choptank river! We could literally gather oysters from the shore(and I still do 😅) , fish and catch crabs! Before the blight we could gather American chestnuts, we have blackberries, raspberries, turkeys, deer, ect ect the list could go on and on. We did farm corn, squash, beans ect.
As many have pointed out there is likely not one name that was widely used, even if adapted for the area, its so bloody big. But I wonder about the possible proto languages and shared similarities between certain langauges. They may not have a word for the land mass, but interesting to see how that developed the history if the languages on the continent like the potential indo-european protolanguage
Only a few minutes in and I'd guess that the Al at the beginning of the name means it actually originates from Moorish (Arabic) influence, so again an exonym.
Why bother giving native names to continents ? The people groups only name places that only (or mostly) they inhabit i.e. regions and countries. Besides there are too many languages that each continent has, so what from which language should this name originate ? Will the others even agree. Thats the reason why continents dont have native names. Its inconvenient and a waste of time. We have kther things to worry
Finding a native name for African is quite insane because there are a lot of different names for Africa and at the same time there's basically no native names for Africa, because very few peoples gave name to the whole continent as we see today. I mean, Africa is connected to Asia and Europe after all.
The 20th century was simply the US getting access to trade previously restricted to Europe in Africa by supporting independence deals that left Africa poor then using humanitarian aid to enforce neocolonial "free" markets for US oil and mining companies.
Only us Colonizers give name to Continents, the native tribes be it African, Native American, Aborigine, Slavic and Iberian didn't even know people outside their motherlands existed, let alone know what the continent they're on looks like to begin with
not true. from the jim crow museum: “The etymology of the word picnic does not suggest racist or racial overtones. Picnic was originally a 17th Century French word, picque-nique. Its meaning was similar to today's meaning: a social gathering where each attendee brings a share of the food.”
Africa is way too divided with all the different tribes of people to have ever named itself. I think the naming of a giant land mass is a recent thing. Areas where people lived had names, but the whole place, and it's not an island, don't think it's possible. If an explorer came through and returned home to his people with a name to give to the place, I can see that. Remember, North and South Korea used to be China. Did they call themselves Asians at the time, were Indians Asian in China and vise versa
The constant statements about how afrocentrism has become extreme and aggressive really soured what was an otherwise great video. I hope you do more research into panafricanism and related topics so that you can learn.
^^^ THIS. This video left an aftertaste... I wholeheartedly agree. ...There was some fat that could have been trimmed. Some viewers will like (and seem already to have fancied) that aftertaste, however, and feel free to echo--if not multiply--the same 'notes' in their comments. Not only an "aftertaste", but the video title gives some foretaste ...that delivers. ...Some shade that survived all editing.
Alkebulan likely comes from the Arabic designation of the Berber tribes in eastern Algeria, modern day name of the region is “Alkaba’il” (kabylia for westerners) meaning “the tribes” in Arabic. It was never usex to refer to the continent
It is practically impossible to find a truly "native" name for something as huge as a continent. All of our modern continent names were either chosen arbitrarily (America & Australia) or derived from names for much smaller regions (Africa: Roman province based around former Carthage; Asia: a small portion of modern-day Türkiye). To find a truly native name, several things would need to happen: 1) All the people on the continent would need to agree on a single language to take this name from. 2) They'd then have to find a language that actually contains a suitable term. Probably with a meaning like "home" or "all the land". 3) Once a suitable term has been agreed upon, it can then be loaned into all the other languages used on the continent. On the other hand ... If the people of Africa collectively decide to rename their continent to Alkebulan, that would basically make it a native name, regardless of its origins.
Not your best video. It feels like you didn't approach it in an entirely unbiased way. You repeatedly mentioned that afrocentrism can manifest in extreme and angry ways that can further damage the image of Africa (???) without providing any argument on that statement. You also said that renaming Africa as Alkebulan is problematic, but didn't explain why. Ok, maybe the name is not historical, maybe it's a very recent invention by those afrocentric groups that you're so scared of, but if that's the case so what?? All names are made up anyway, what does it matter that this particular name was invented recently? I don't want to assume anything, but it feels like your actual issue with the name is who created it and why they use it. I think your videos would be much more better if you actually adopted a descriptive approach, not a prescriptive one, especially if you have some unchecked biases
It is wrong, if you talk to a lot of actual African people, they’ll tell you why. Afrocentrists don’t sell a real idea of what Africa is and should be, it’s their own inaccurate and outside voice that they’re trying to push over those of people actually born on the continent. The idea of a single unified continent of Africa is itself a coloniser concept designed to diminish the immense diversity of its native inhabitants, when Afrocentrism peddles the idea of a singular African identity, it diminishes that diversity. Just look at how indigenous North African peoples often face immense racism from Afrocentrists, because they don’t fit their specific idea of what an African is and should be
@@ezrafriesner8370 A unified Africa has never been a "colonizer concept" it's obvious to anyone with two brain cells that the European Governments have known for quite some time that Africa was not unified nationally but, they probably noticed similarities between different groups. Either way a unified Africa is what is better for everyone on the continent! So, why not do it and if Alkebulan ends up being the name so, what!
Africa was an ancient term referring to a tribe in present-day Tunisia. Exemplified in eg Scipio Africanus (236-183 BC). Each country has numerous languages and tribes. Eg Tanzania has more than 156 tribes and languages as different as Chinese and English. The unification of countries was, and to some extent still is a struggle. I just wanted to let you know that there's no need for newly invented names.
Glad you've made a video on this, I was trying to find the native names for the continent in different African languages, and kept running into different translations of "Africa", then this came up, I investigated it, and only turned up black nationalists and nation of islam, which is always a bad sign. It's ironic in a way that those black nationalists undermine and overgeneralize the place they have so much reverence for, at the expense of its actual inhabitants, that's as American as it gets.
Africa in Latin does not mean sunny. Wasn't it a term borrowed from Amazigh populations which referred to caves? This was the story I heard. For reference, my source is the UA-cam channel Cogito and my basic knowledge of Latin as an Italian
You mentioned the Atlantic slave trade but not the Islamic slave trade that went on before during and after the Atlantic slave trade and was far more brutal
I would not say the endonyms itself is problematic, but rather the perceived need to legitimize it by claiming it's historical and/or predates the exonym. Endonyns need not predate their exonyms.
Pam African would be great if it started in the 13th century but if anything would work would be black pan Europeans colonized Africa because even when Dutch were fighting against Africans the French wouldn’t sell guns to Africans because they thought it would be better for thier white enemy to get the land than for a African to get support .. nato is just a group of racists
I like how we always talk about the scramble for Africa when it comes to colonization, while the Arabs colonized the northern quarter of the continent much earlier and haven’t left since 😂
@@darkballerz No... Africa is a terrible place. The only country that seems to do very well at all is Botswana (if you discount one fifth of them having AIDS). Africans are just generally jealous of European domination and want to invent this idea of a African empire consisting of all black people. It is NEVER gonna happen because Africans aren't and have never been good enough to dominate the continent. They have too many enemies within their own continent that would want to be the dominating force in creating such an empire it is why so many African nations are in a civil war all the time.
The vast majority of African people will say the same thing. A lot of them find Afrocentrism insulting and a dumbing down of the immense diversity of their cultures
This video has almost 40K views: The name "Africa" became widely used after the continent's countries gained independence in the mid-20th century. However, this landmass has been known by various names throughout history. Recently, some Pan-Africanists have proposed renaming the continent "Alkebulan," citing an old French text that claims this name was used by Northwest AFRICAN Moors. This proposal has sparked debate, raising important questions: Is adopting a name from an ancient text fundamentally different from keeping a colonizer-given name? If the continent had been named "Rhodesia" or "New Belgian" instead of "AFRICA" by colonizers who officially named the continet, would the suggestion of "Alkebulan" face similar mockery? Collectively African nations and its peoples on the continent and within the diaspora should have the right to collectively rename their continent if they ever decided to do so based on their shared beliefs and identity. It's presumptuous for outsiders to ridicule or discourage such a decision. This debate illustrates the lingering effects of colonialism on perceptions of names and identity, while also showcasing African and PanAfricanist efforts to reclaim their heritage and self-definition. The influence of Arabic on African languages and names is complex and often disputed. Many place names and words commonly thought to have Arabic origins are actually indigenous: • Timbuktu: Often said to come from Arabic, but likely derived from Berber languages. • Swahili: While heavily influenced by Arabic, the name itself may have African origins. • Senegal: Sometimes attributed to Arabic, but more likely from the Wolof language. • Zanzibar: Often linked to Arabic, but the exact origin is disputed. • Sudan: While commonly thought to be from Arabic, some argue for indigenous African origins. • Kenya: Debated origin, with some claiming Arabic roots and others asserting purely African etymology. • Mali: Sometimes linked to Arabic, but likely from Mandinka or other local languages. This pattern reveals a tendency to attribute African words to external sources, underestimating the richness of African languages and cultures. This lingering colonial mindset complicates efforts to reclaim indigenous names and identities. The Alkebulan debate goes beyond choosing a new name; it challenges established narratives about language origins and cultural influences in Africa. Ultimately, Africans or those in the African diaspora should have the freedom to define and name themselves, whether by reclaiming ancient terms, embracing Arabic influences, or creating new names. The crucial factor is that these choices originate from within Africa, not imposed externally.
I don't get it, I speak English so why wouldn't I call places by thier English names? Like I don't go calling Germany Deustchland except when speaking German
I hate treating africa as unified landmass. Oh is this how some people on the continent call the continent? Good, don't claim everyone does, i hate people who do that. You won't find two more different neighboring world than arabs and blacks yet some people say africa, you know Rastafarianis and sheeesh, and to bunch together all subsaharan African together is idiotic, I'd say there are 4 subsaharan civilisations, but that's also reductive. Antiracists are most ignorant people around while racist, like yours truly try to understand other ethnicities for higher efficiency and accuracy.
He actually does mention the near impossibility of all the diverse languages and cultures of africa all sharing one name for the continent in the video
Interesting idea... Although I don't think the concept of continent is intuitive (their our country here and their country there and the land under it is just that, land). That make the probably of any continent having a home grown word for it rather thin, let alone one being adopted in every language there. That being said, the Mediterranean civilisations had the concept of continent, I would look in late Egypt empire for one.
Far from Wakanda, most of the continent was in the stone age until the colonizers arrived, and may have remained that way for the next 10,000 years if left alone (which is not a problem...it might in fact have been a better outcome). Thus, there was no idea of what a continent even was, hence no native name until the colonizers arrived and brought new ideas and technologies. Thus, a native term like "land" would have had to be used. As an analogy, that's like if Europeans didn't like the word for Europe (assuming it were non-native) and so decided that every European country would use the Slovenian word for land (ethnic group that gives its word picked out of a hat) for all of Europe. Do people think that would be better?
Err, no. Quite a lot of the continent had reached the use of iron roughly at the same time as Europeans. Sudan, Simbabwe, Ethopia, West Africa and the Suaheli-speaking city states all had their own high culture and trade routes over several hundred years. The Mansa Musa of Mali was said being so rich that his pilgrimage to Arabia brought about a financial crisis from all the gold he spent.
@@fermintenava5911 Maybe so. I'm not an expert on the subject, so feel free to keep the discussion going. However, I did say "most", not "all" of the continent. I would have imagined most of the development being on the coasts and areas that bordered Arab trading routes. I mean, you mention Musa of Mali. Musa is "Moses" in Arabic. The colonists had already arrived...the Arab ones that many forget about, since society only focuses on one group of colonists and slave traders. How about the areas away from Arab traders and especially further south and in the interior? Either way, I think you could say the same thing about the Americas. Some Aztec (etc) and Incan exceptions, but by and large hunter-gatherers across the continent, again, not that that's necessarily a bad thing. I hope the Amazon rainforest remains a land of people in loincloths rather than a place of high-rise apartments or cattle grazing land.
@@Rationalificthe caveat of "most" still isn't really true. by and large, by the time of European colonisation in Africa there were nation states, metalworking, and agriculture (ie Malian empire, Benin, Zanzibar, Ethiopia). it seems a little colonial to assume that the majority of the continent was in the neolithic and that technologies that were available were necessarily the result of colonisation. as for Arab colonisation, as much as it very much happened, mansa musa, though a Muslim with an Arabic name was a king of the west African Malian empire, and was believed to be the richest man on earth at the time. iron working and other metallurgy was certainly available to Africans, with the earliest evidence dating to 1200BC.
@@RationalificWith regards to the Americas being populated by hunter gatherer societies, this is still not entirely true. it seems that a lot of pre-Columbian settlement in the Americas had agriculture (where do you think we get new world crops like potatoes, pumpkins, tomatoes and maize from otherwise), and there is some evidence for iron working in the missisipian culture in the 1500s. while hunter gatherer societies are not necessarily any more primitive than our own ones, the perception that precolonial America and Africa were somehow stuck in the neolithic is still used to justify colonialism
@@aaaaagggggggghhhhhhMost of African tribes were not even using the wheel (let alone written language) by the time the colonists arrived, so your examples of advanced culture/technology are very much exceptions.
You missed one of the three colonizers and slave traders of Africa, and it is actually the biggest, worst, longest of the three. The Arab slave trade actually lasted into the 20th century.
@@burner555 people do all sorts of crimes. Slavery is illegal now everywhere. There is legal near slavery in the Middle East, but there was actually fully legal actual slavery until the 20th century there.
I once heard a theory that the names of the continents around the Mediterranean Sea were of Roman origin in reference to their direction. Of course, Mediterranean means middle of the world, where Rome is. Africa is land to the south, Asia is land to the east, and Europe is land to the north. I never had much confidence in this theory, but did find it satisfying. And, Atlantis would have been land to the west.
Basically... your continent needs to be small enough (e.g. Europe) to be noticed at all by the natives. Otherwise the natives would say they live "on the earth" or "under the sky" or other not so informative sayings, instead of naming a continent...
Europe wasn't named as a continent either really, Europe and Asia (in their original greek forms) were originally just the names for the west and east coast of the Aegean sea respectively (separated by Bosporus). The greeks then continued to call any land west/east of Bosporus that as well until they ran out of land and boom, modern notion of a continent was born (hence the, at the time at least, arbitrary line across the Eurasia)
Ah, ultra-nationalist half-cooked insane theories. Such a fantastic topic. I like watching a youtuber that covers obscure and niche Russian games that are this same kind of absurd insanity of nonsensical ideas mashed together into a nonsensical ball that somehow for some people seems logical and valid. It's fascinating.
Had you heard of this name for Africa before this video?
yes! alkebulan is a producer/rapper
No
No
Nope
Nope
This is an obligatory comment on how Africa is too large and immensely multicultural to have any one native name.
Diversity is overrated. Alot of actual Africans in Africa would prefer a united African state, the only reason there is none is because Africans are also the least empowered people in the world. And oh, when I say "Africa" I mean Sub Saharan Africa only. And before you say it, yes, it's ironic, but that's word everyone most associates with this part of the world.
And does that apply to any other continent?
@@devingunnels3251yes, he explained that in the video too
@@devingunnels3251 it applies to every continent you anencephalic twat. The only ones it doesn’t apply to are Australia, which is so small it was nearly monocultural even before the colonizers, and Antarctica, where no one fucking lived except penguins.
@@devingunnels3251Australia is probably the only continent where the natives are relatively similar
Historically, no native people named their land based on their skin color; such names were usually given by foreigners. For instance, the Arabs named Sudan, the Greeks named Ethiopia, and the Berbers named Guinea. Moreover, naming the entire continent solely as the land of blacks is not fully accurate, as North Africa is predominantly not dark-skinned, not to mention the linguistic diversity of the region.
You reminded me that one time where some extremists accused north Africans in the internet to not be "real" Africans because we didn't have black skin and said that we were arabs that have taken over the land,
@@snibo1024 The original people who lived there were. Archaeology and artwork from 4000 years ago already shows it.
@@iburuma3621 how can archeology show that people had a dark skin? Beside drawings there's no way to prove that using archeology and even drawing can't be trusted because people take some artistic all the time
@snibo1024 we know where light skin come from and its not from africa, and its recent.
@@croixfadas Yeah, 4000 years is long enough for a population to change its physical appearance. That doesnt mean they arent native, or at least been there long enough they might as well be.
If I had a nickel for every time Afrocentrists just default to Arabic names instead of anything actually African, I’d have some new Jordans
Kinda ironic coming from a web with Viking pfp I hope u know they’re the biggest grapist in Europe and mainly bunch of babarians not even matched to beat native Americans that didn’t have Iron Age and Leif Erickson couldn’t even leave a inprint till Vikings meatriders spend millions to discover a dirty boat in the Americas
Trve @@stellacwickbell7739
There are way too many languages in Africa to specify a universal name. Arabs had the most influence there prior to Europeans so it makes sense.
Great, now we are being denied right to name our land by some foreigner.
@@silusmkhwananzi3121 you are free to call anything what ever you want, literally no one cares.. in fact neither do you, when have you ever called africa this??? Like i say you are free to do that but we are all free to call it stupid
The problem with the Idea that Africa should have a native name is to the contrary of Afro Centrism. Africa has and probably will never be a united land of one people.
Its a land full of different people, tribes and languages.
Which language should be chosen then? Should it be the largest spoken? Should it be the oldest? How do you pick one that represents the whole continent.
Even the UK wasn't united until King James🇬🇧
He wasn't English, but Scottish.
However, he insisted on English over Scottish or Welsh, as their language🇬🇧
Welsh & Scottish, sound nothing like English
what language should be chosen? english. even in ASEAN, the official language is english, not malaysian or indonesian despite it has the largest speaker.
It fits into western Afrocentrism in particular, not so much for real Africans.
@@rizkyadiyanto7922 ... y'do realize that the nation of southeast _asia_ have absolutely nothing to do with the nations of _africa,_ right
That's just what the evil man jakub and his horrible eurasians would have you believe.
I'm sorry but the native name of Antarctica is Kwaknoot, named after the great penguin Pharaoh Kwaknoot III., who once unified the lands under penguin rule.
(i'll show myself out, thank you very much)
😂
All of the ruling class of Antarctica were emperor penguins, not pharaohs.
I'll snow myself out*
Doesn't that exclude killer whales and lion seals from their lands history
Killer Wales closest land relatives are hippos and elephants! So they would have more claim to Afican lands than Antarctica 😅
Crazy huh!
As a native Arabic speaker. The word Kebul -كبل- means tied using chains, so the name might refer to slaves, or the slave market docks in the east of Africa.
The word land however isn't a part of the word, "an" is a suffix used to indicate more or the fullness of something (like "ful")
TL;DR Al-Kebulan = The Chainful
Considering how antidemocratic many of the pan Africanist leaders are not surprising. Also I thought the suffix -an could double as either the accusative case marker or the اً part after an adjective
I have dug in it and yes, it might be the case. Earliest mention I could find was about 1813, by a spanish book called "La Iberiada. Poema Épico Á la Gloriosa Defensa de Zaragoza", which mentoins several ways nations around the world call Africa. It says that arabs called it Alkebulan. Many texts after simply copied that part, like an English dictionary from 1925. Funniest thing is that arabs might never called it like that, because alongside Alkebulan book mentions, that indians called Africa as Besecath. It doesn't make sense, because Besecath is a hebrew word.
This is not true. The original spelling is alkebu-lan, which is not an Arabic word at all. Also, Arabic came about with Islam in the 6th-7th centuries during Arab colonization, so how can the original name of the African continent be an Arabic word when Africa predates this period?! People just make up anything.
@@rickmarshall5419 Alkebu-lan firstly appears in 1940s and it sounds absolutely nothing like any african language. Again, the Iberiada hypothesis (read above) much stronger, because a) Alkebulan is a real-ish word and b) ones, who firstly use, it attribute it as a synonym for Africa
@@rickmarshall5419 The name Alkebulan is an Arabic word given by and for Arabs to Africa. It isn't the African name for the African continent, and I never said that it was.
I also have no idea where you got the spelling Alkebu-lan from, but I'd like to know.
Africa is too large and has too many language families to have one singular endonym. Probably, many endonyms for every language family or every language.
The African Union could come together and decide among themselves what to call the continent.
@@taylormadealpha I don't think that's necessary, we don't share a culture.
@@alitheia_It being diverse, that's my point. How else do you get people from a continent that big with so many cultures to agree to what to call Africa? Everyone would need, want, a seat at the table.
And even those would be recent, post-colonialism. A Bantu in 14th century Kongo would have no idea they lived in a recognizable landmass, and would laugh at the idea that there was a word that could describe his land, a Khoi-San's land, an Amazigh's land, an Chadian's land... all at the same time.
(I mean, he would laugh if he knew those other peoples even existed...)
And even those are recent inventions, because when those languages were developing they had no idea they were living in that specific landmass. They knew the region they lived and neighbouring ones, and that was it.
At the end of the day, the whole concept of continents having names is quite recent in history. Most people in the world were not really able to be concerned with much beyond their own borders and the borders of their immediate neighbors. Unless you were nomadic or a trader, the world effectively ended a hundred miles from your home, and stories of places beyond that distance might as well have been a dream.
And its common sense
That's for the common people but there has been names for continents pretty much since antiquity. The Bible and Greek myths recognize the difference between Europe Asia and Africa.
Obviously a much more Mediterraneocentric and small Europe Africa and Asia XD but they were there. And I wouldn't say 3000 years is little.
But a certain thing is... I'm pretty sure nobody really cared about what the name was. I mean Europa was a zoophilic girlfriend of Zeus so... Only important thing is... Theres a bunch of land over here, a bunch of land over there, and another bunch of land over there (and then they found another bunches of land waaaaay over there)
@@d.esanchez3351 In the view of human history 3000 years is very recent.
@@adaptivelearner6162I think written history started like 10000 years ago
@@shirkam3657 Even if that's true what's your point?
Funnily enough, the word Abd/Abeed is still used in Arabic for black people and it means “slave”….
Slavs were slaves, and it's how the word got into English
not exactly slave, more like servant.
What dialect is this? In the dialect I speak we say “أسود”
i thought abd was mainly used with a more religious connotation, like slave to god/[word related to some virtue], but i don’t speak arabic
@@morgan0 it has 2 meanings, worshiper and slave, a lot of muslims have "abd" in their name like for example "abd allah" which means "worshiper of god" meanwhile the word abd for slave is used by racists in the Arabic speaking world to mock black people, it's also used in sudan although majority of Sudanese people is black but it's still used there by light skinned people to mock dark skinned people
if you around hoteps you hear this word a lot. someone gave me a map of Africa upside down and it was titled "Alkebulan". They say thats the "original" name for Africa but it sounds VERY arabic. It sound like an exonym.
Alkebulan isn't Arabic tho
There is an arabic speaker in the comments that says alkebulan translates to "the chainful" not exactly the best name for the continent.
They didn't give you a map upside down. They gave you a map that was right side up based on the perspective of ancient Afrikans.
Europe's name is of Asian origin and vice-versa because they never needed to refer to their own continent, only the other one. We have a tendency to cobble together all the "others" in a single homogeneous group.
Just clicked on the video, but I don't imagine there's very many traditional (pre colonization, including Roman) native names for Africa because it's so big. Different areas of the continent, sure, but not the landmass as a whole.
Yeah, we run into the same issue when asking what the Pre-Columbian, native name for America. (Didn't Patric make a video on that?). It hinges on the idea that said natives thought of this landmass as a defined area that needed a name. Which is not a given, divisions like that are somewhat arbitrary and context-dependent.
Maybe the AU could come together and they could decide what to call the continent for themselves. That would suffice.
@@taylormadealpha Yeah, sounds like a good idea.
@@taylormadealphathey have. It's Africa
@@kightsunAfrica is a name given by the Romans.
It was not just the trans-Atlantic slave trade that took people away from Africa. There was a thriving trans-Saharan slave trade run by Arabs that lasted much longer than the European slave trade. One of the reasons the Arab slave trade is overlooked is that male slaves were routinely castrated while the half-Arab, half-African offspring of the female slaves ended up being absorbed into Arab society so that there was no opportunity for a separate African-Arab population to build up.
Today, males are being castrated....also, they used to castrate males in the middle ages
Alto, was high male
Because of castrati
Alto, means HIGH
The castrati
looking into it some more, it seems that in total, the trans-saharan slave trade took half or fewer people. 7-10 million in total vs 12 not counting those who died before, during, or after. and that’s over 1300 vs 400 years. so in terms of the cost to african civilizations, the trans-atlantic slave trade was far more significant.
@@morgan0 10 is not "half or fewer" than 12.
also you confused "less advantageous to my socio-political ideology" with "far more significant"
@@morgan0You're only counting those who had made it to port. There were millions that died en route.
@@dan8910100 12 does not count those who died along the way, which afaik was quite a lot. but only a small amount of rounding up to 14 does make it twice 7, which seemed to be the more accepted figure for the trans-saharan slave trade
The most offensive things I find with Afrocentrism amongst African Americans is not hatred towards white people but thinking Africa is one unified entity like one nation rather than just a geographic continent with the largest diversities of ethnicities, cultures and even genetics on earth. That shows that most African Americans are basically just like most other westerners from the colonized America today: being obsessed with thinking everyone's unified based on appearances and "race".
In fact, America is more unified than Africa due to being heavily rooted in dominating colonialism as the native population was almost mostly replaced entirely.
Like in any other non-American continents, different African ethnicities and nationalities don't see each other the same like Americans do just because they share similar skin color. Most of them sees African Americans like any other Americans for sharing the basic westernized American values and mostly sees Africans the same for their appearances.
Well that's kind of what happens when you've been striped of all ancestry and history, and accepted what you've been taught by the mainstream culture for a couple hundred years. Then you use that incomplete knowledge to cobble together some semblance of a "culture." It's human nature to believe that everyone does it the way you do; whether it's Europeans believing that every American (North or South) does everything the same way, every white American believing that everyone in America does things the same way, or whether it's every black American who believes that everyone who is black in America shares the same cultural values just because they are black. Then extending that to every dark skinned person, regardless of culture. Sometimes to the point of calling others not "black enough" if they have practices outside of the cultural norm. In truth it's all imagined and short sighted, but when confronted with the truth it's easier to believe what fits their narrative of the "motherland". There is the dream of the motherland---and going back to a time when our people were something, in a country where we were free, and lived in harmony, until the white man stole us. However, just like those "good, old days" I often hear folks talking about, both scenarios are historically inaccurate and downright fantasy.
@@SomethingBeautifulHandcrafts In reality, Africa was probably rife with intertribal wars like in my country. 😅
If I remember correctly, some black tribe chiefs actually sold members of the rival tribe to the Europeans?
@@WannzKaswan In fact, that was the practice. Not boogey man white man from Europe with a net snatching African children.
Instead, the strongest slaver kingdoms started being more aggressive so they could secure a monopoly on slave trade with Europeans in exchange for goods like guns, which they'd use to capture even more slaves, in a vicious cycles.
An infamous example is the kingdom of Kongo. Their kings formed deep ties with the Portuguese and became a local hegemon in the Congo, using European weaponry to secure a steady supply of slaves to trade
It's fucking brutal, all because of the greed of empire, millions died either crossing the atlantic or toiling to death in foreign shores
@@SomethingBeautifulHandcrafts It's a tragedy to see so many people live in a ficticious fantasy of a "gone great past" instead of living in the present and building an actually real worthwhile future.
@@SomethingBeautifulHandcrafts It has an alarming similarity to historic revisionism in europe. The way some afrocentrists talk about the lighter-skinned north african population eerily reminds me about german rhetoric against poles ("We were there before them, they stole our land, they falsly claim our cultural achievments as their own" etc.). The horribly inaccurate Netflix documentary about Cleopatra really highlights this ideology.
Talking about a "native name" (singular) of Africa makes as much sense as talking about a "native name" (singular) of our planet...
Is it "Terra"? Is it "Earth"? Is it "Zeme"? Is it "Föld"? Is it "Toprak"?...
That's why there should be no world government either
Don’t forget eretz or olam from Hebrew
I vote for Midgard to become the official name of our planet
@@marcelocouto213 no? This would be germanocentric
Jordan!- thats also a name ...Föld is too much föld to me, as a native földi.
Africa is a western name.
The importance of a continent in terms of identity is a western concept.
Pan-Africanism is a western concept.
Even pan-Europeanism is a western concept, firstly because it's not a real continent, but also because identity attached to a continent is idiotic.
In a continent there are various religions, cultures and ethnicities who have nothing in common with your own.
A Houthi and a Chinese person are not the same because they are both in Asia. A Moroccan and a Zimbabwean aren't the same because they are both in Africa.
While regional integration is good, pan-Africanism is brainrot.
Absolutely true.
As a European I habe never heard of pan-Europeanism
@@deutschermichel5807 its the reason the European Union exists, europeans together are stronger than by themselves, greetings from Andorra
@@oretan2126 EU was created because the french wanted rheincoal.
Pan africanism is an anticolonial ideology that exists to unite disparaging people's with the same conditions. The idea doesn't claim they are the same but that they have a similar experience and should unite against it
Saying Africa used to have a native name is like saying Asia had a native name. Just completely ignores the fact that it's a large continent with many cultures.
The only reason Europe might have a native name is because it’s incredibly small. However I honestly see no reason Europe should be considered a different continent than Asia
@@capadociaash8003 because some thousand odd years ago a bunch of rich people got together and said “clearly we’re different from THOSE people over THERE” and dictated that maps would say as much. And we humans fucking ADORE scripting our own lives and the lives of others in accordance to what some dead shitheel had to say when they were alive.
@@capadociaash8003 why not take it a step further and make it all Afroeurasia? It's all one landmass after all.
@@pepp418 There’s no reason we shouldn’t do that
@@capadociaash8003 Based as hell
i’m not surprised there’s never been a united native name for Africa given how diverse the continent is. the idea is just another product of colonization and ethno monolith beliefs that only harm the perception of multiple cultures and its respective countries
No, it isn't that's something that European (Western mostly) liberals tell themselves to distract from the reality of how indiginified it is
Of course, the real test for if Alkebulan becomes the new name for Africa is if people start using it that way.
There is a non-zero chance that in 100 years, some linguist will make the equivalent of a YT video. "Did you know the name Alkebulan (which now everybody uses), is really based on a folk etymology?"
I mean, I do agree with Patric that a name with a solid foundations in native languages would be preferable. But that raises further questions. Like: "Which native language, exactly?"
And of course, that is just my opinion, and I am not even from Africa myself. (Though I did live there for five years as a child, thinking of Tanzania as my second home, so not completely lacking skin in this game.)
Linguistics is a very new so called science. So it’s not everything on languages. Its etymology is, applying their rules is GUNES DIL, which is very ancient Turkish tribes called as the Sun People.
@mattisvov >I do agree with Patric that a name with a solid foundations in native languages would be preferable
But why?
@@Fluoman_ Well, I think that comes off as more... respectful, for lack of a better word. To put it simply, that's how I would like it if I where from Africa.
@@mattisvov I'm pretty sure nobody in Austria (österreich: the empire in the east) cares that the land was named, evidently, not by natives.
It isn't obvious at all that people would care about the name other people give to their country/continent unless deliberately insulting, which Africa is not.
@@Fluoman_ Well, of course. But the very topic of this video implies that there are people who very much would like rename Africa.
Which is understandable. Unlike say Austria, Africa have been the victim of colonization, so an exonym may hold a different konnotation to people.
However, I am not saying I think these people necessarily are in a majority, or that a name-change would ever come to pass. There things tend to be decided by historical inertia.
It reminds of the nationalistic use of Maharlika to refer to the Philippines, despite the problems that arise when you look into the background of such a term
Etymology of the word aside, it's tacky af too
@@lockecole4894In regards to the use of Alkebulan, I’ve only ever seen in used in small Facebook communities back in 2014 and as a fun fact here and there
What I learnt is that "maharlika" is cognate with Indonesian "merdeka" and both are from Sanskrit महर्द्धिक (maharddhika), meaning "prosperious".
@@devofficialchannelliking marha
@@lockecole4894”Tacky” cause it isn’t whyte-washed.
I honestly don't think there could have even been one. I mean, i think that in antiquity the Egyptians new of everything up to modern somalia in east africa and about the north african coast, but I don't think anyone, not even africans, knew about the entire continent.
I know the carthaginians made it to about modern day Gabon and I don’t even think they had a name for it
@@malegria9641 Really? Wow, that's so cool! I thought that to sail that distance, you'd need something like the caravel haha
@@malegria9641 they had two competing names for it: Ethiopia for the people living there and Libya for the fact it was pretty clearly the same land mass as what they knew before their voyage of what Libya was. Note the account of the voyage was translated into Greek so the Punic names for the regions were different
it's not abt what you think tho it's abt history
@Based_Gigachad_001 Just the areas with black people. Aethiopia means land of the burnt faces.
The problem with a United native African name is the exact same problem the Native Americans have if they proposed the same idea, both groups were never united under a single idea for many millennia, both groups on both continents were split in their own respective cultures and tribes and frequently fought wars over each others resources and land, which the losing side would often be sold into slavery if the winning side practiced the institution, which many of them did.
It can be said the same for Erope but it was much more bigger and lasted for much longer - biggest wars in history were of Eropean, ie, WW1, WW2, Cold War and Fast forward: Russian against Ukraine/NATO.
So outsiders name the “continent.”
At least there are soem ones which aren’t just the european name loaned, like Kheya Wita. Anyway, Africa doesn’t have one at all it seems.
@@Egr-et6ar The name was adopted by the Romans from the Greeks, naturally spreading from Romance to Germanic languages. Africa is much bigger and has more rugged terrain, so names for the continent (for the people who even thought that it was a seperate landmass, which would only be VERY adventurous traders at the time), it could not be adopted by other groups on the continent.
@@tectagon Europa, Europe comes from the Phoenician word EROB, meaning where the sun set (west of Phoenicia,west of Bosphorus, Sea of Marmora). Erebo: I go under.
Africa was the ancient name of Tunisia
Not even Africa started out as a term for all of Africa. There couldn't have been a native term until at least one group of people was aware of the whole land mass.
In a nutshell, you could try to dig if for example 16th century Ethiopia had one, as they probably had access to Portuguese maps. But that wouldn't have been any more universal than Africa to begin with.
Well, the concept of continents itself is European in its nature. What is and is not a continent and the boundaries separating them are mostly arbitrary. I would say that it is impossible to give a single name to something as big as a continent while accurately representing all the different cultures of the land.
Right..... One could argue that Europe, Africa and Asia make one super continent since it's all connected. Many people already view Asia and Europe as Eurasia.
Continents are social constructs
wrong continental plates exist
@@belstar1128they seem to be talking more about the landmasses and the cultural separation between them.
@@belstar1128 And they don't line up with our continents in many cases.
@@belstar1128 if continents are defined by continental plates then New Zealand is a continent
0:27 bro casually gave tunisia to algeria and thought we wouldn't notice 💀🙏
No continent has native names. In this case, let's rename Europe to Rome, Asia to Mongolia, and Australia to Kangaroo
No this one is bad because im a white savior and the poor people of africa have an exonym name 🥺
*Australia to Budj Bim, the largest and most complex Aboriginal site
We was kangs and sheeeettt 😂😂😂😂
Europe has a native name, atleast it's named by native greeks.
@@CreativeUsernameHere-r1k The video explicitly says that Europe may have been named by Asia.
Not mentioned in this piece is the fact that the term Africa might in fact BE NATIVE! Don't forget that the Ancient Egyptians existed BEFORE the Ancient Greeks and before the Romans, and so, the reason why those two cultures gave the land to the south of the Mediterranean the name of Africa might ultimately go back to Egypt.
This would be really funny
Africa is European.It was coined from a language group that met up with the Europeans at N.Africa.Something about the "Afri-"
@@MugukuThumari.777 Not necessarily so. It is possible that the language spoken by the Egyptians could have originated in Africa, and migrated north. Do not confuse skin color with ancestry or language, which is what you seem to be doing. No, the Egyptians are not black Africans, but that does NOT mean that they are not African.
I found this name interesting, so I looked into it a bit more. A few things I discovered:
-The name appeared in a song title (Alkebulan Land of the Blacks) on the 1972 Jimmy Heath jazz album "The Gap Sealer".
-The passage that pops up most often when you search 'Alkebulan' on the internet comes from the book "Black Man of the Nile and his Family" by Yosef Ben-Jochannan (1972), but the author provides no sources or footnotes.
-The earliest known appearance of the name comes from the book Cosmographie Universelle (1575) by André Thevet in the legend of his map of Africa. The legend reads:
"Having described the kingdoms, provinces, mountains, rivers, gulfs and promontories of this part of the world which we call AFRICA, the Greeks [called] Lybia, and the Arabs [called] Alkebulan ..."
The only other sources I saw using the name were also from French books.
-There is a region in the north of Algeria called Kabylia, which is a distortion of the Arabic qaba'il which either means "the tribes" or "to accept". The Arabs, after the conquest of the Maghreb, used the word to refer to local populations that accepted Islam.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me that Alkebulan could have been a 16th century French corruption of "al qaba'il".
Africa is a native name too contrary to popular belief it's not named by Romans it's a native name the Romans heard but yeah it was the name of North only
If i remember cirrectly it comes from a people from north africa called the Afri
@@callnight1441 it's a mountain in Algeria and the name of a tribe
Technically its the name that the Romans gave to the area around Carthage. Thus Scipio Africanus, the conquor of the Africans. Later on it was expanded more and more to apply to the whole continent.
@@rebeccaorman1823 no he got the name from the place not vice versa
@@nziom that's more or less what I said. The Romans called the area around Carthage Africa. Therefore, when Publus Cornelius Scipio won a big victory there they added the conquor of Africa to his name.
This is just a minor mistake, but I kept noticing that the main map you use for Africa doesn't show Tunisia.
Interestingly, the old Roman province of Africa was mostly Tunisia (the borders weren't exactly the same, but close enough).
This was very interesting, although I’d make the contribution that the name Africa is also believed to derive from that of a native Amazigh group in what is now Tunisia, being used by the Romans to refer to the area. As Europeans encountered more of the continent over time, it gradually came to refer to the entire landmass.
We can't have foreigners in Rome naming Africa. So we'll have foreigners in the US name it instead. 🤪
its called Abibrem in twi but most African languages just call it a variant of Africa. some have unique names for Europe and other continents for some reason i think people in west Africa and the horn of Africa and some other parts of east Africa probably knew about continents. but i also think some parts like in southern Africa and central Africa really didn't know what was going on on the other side of the continent and just assumed Africa was the entire world .
It is reported that there was contact and trade between Carthage and Mande and Atlantic-Congo peoples
@@everettduncan7543but do they open trade?
Mande had contact with Arabs not Carthage they didn’t even get to Sudan how u expect them to go to west Africa
I thought "Africa" was possibly Berber in origin.
It is
It is, but people seem to be on the hunt for new problems to complain about.
These new age "native" names for continents are not only stupid but baseless, just like when some tribes in the Americas tried forcing Abya Yala as a new name for the entire continent when it was barely used by like one tribe in Panama
Countries in Europe, like 🇪🇸 should be renamed as Al-Andalus since it’s “native” name is new age and baseless.
@@Egr-et6ar lol España is older than Al Andalus, idiot
@@Egr-et6aral Andalus was the name that the Muslim colonizers gave, after the liberation of Spain, the natives renamed the country spain
@@stefanstruger9949 Colonizers? The traditional story is that in the year 711, an oppressed Christian chief, Julian, went to Musa ibn Nusair, the governor of North Africa, with a plea for help against the tyrannical Visigoth ruler of Spain, Roderick. Musa responded by sending the young general Tariq bin Ziyad with an army of 7000 troops.
@@Egr-et6ar oh yes the Muslim colonizers were "liberators" right. Spoken like a true tyrant
My woke sister scolded me for saying Africa and told me about this. I immediately called bullshit since her claim was that it was in universal use in pre colonial Africa, from north to south. It made absolutely no sense for all the different tribes with completely different languages to get together and come up with a name like that.
Don't worry, she's probably a white woman. She's allowed to be racist. As long as we brown people are used as their shields. They are fine with being racist towards us.
and everybody clapped
@@redmage5251I mean “somebody says something stupid and argues with a person better versed in the topic” isn’t an unrealistic prompt. If OP made this up they’re good at making it seem real.
@@redmage5251 This isn't a reddit moment or whatever the hell you're thinking. This is more like a legit conversation he had with their sister. No other specifics is mentioned.
@@redmage5251 CORRECT
02:30 There is a theory that the name Europe comes from the river Evros (greek, Maritsa in Bulgarian, since thats where it starts today).
The thracian lands were called Europe and subsequently that name expanded to the whole continent, rather than the Balkan peninsula.
Complaining about a continent name not being named form the people who lived there originally is stupid, especially if it turns out no continent was named by the original inhabitants
Never forget King Roger II of Sicily, who declared himself ‘King of Africa’ in 1148.
Quite the delusional fellow
Mf spawned in the wrong period
@@burner555 blud though it was the 19th century
Based Gadhaffi moment
French Norman,Living in Sicily,conquering Italy,crowning himself king of Africa.
I love Feudalism.
7:13 And according to Genesis, the Garden of Eden was located in or around Mesopotamia…
Honestly, every language has its own name for other races or countries. Africa is this places English name, as it is called "Afurika" in Japanese or "Apeulika" in Korean.. So if you are an african and your specific language has a specific name for "Africa" then of course it makes sense to call it that.. Like here in South Africa, we use a Xhosa word to refer to South Africa called "Mzansi" which might be an informal name but no one bats an eye if it is used, I personally love it
3:20 Tunisa just dissapeared and became part of algeria
(2:20) Now, Australia, as you shown isn't a continent, that's the country. The continent is usually called Oceania. Australia is the main landmass, of course, but just like other continents, the island are considered part of the continent. Not that Oceania is from native origin anyway.
A video on names of indian states? 😅 Maybe next video!
There already exists such a video.
As an algerian I just don't like africosentrism because it gives a fake idea that Africa is just one culture and this is totally false africa is extremely rich with cultures and it's a shame that we talk about one culture for a hole continent.
Also I confirm that alkebulan is not Arabic I would translate it to ard al soud personally and the fact that it has an e in it's name stinks even more (case arabic only has 3 vowels a u i)
Snibo, you clearly don’t know Afro-centric thought. I know of no scholar who argues that Africa is one culture. Just like you Arabs are not all one culture. Rather, Afrocentrists argue that these varied cultures emanate from one stream. Similar to followers of Islam being many cultures but all basing themselves on the principles of Quran & Sunnah.
The stream we refer to is Kemet, Arabs call the same land Mizr & the Greeks before them called it Egypt. The inhabitants themselves knew it as Kmt, or the Land of the Blacks. Eurosceptics and Mr Z Hawass, concur black is integral in the name Kmt, but deviously suppose that it refers to the black land (ie fertile soil); but the Medu Netcher (Hieroglyphs to the uninformed) establishes that the word designates the people and not just the land.
The complete disregard for the temples, pyramids & sculpture of Kmt, in the Quran proves that this land was not peopled by Arabs or other Semitic/ Caucasians.
It is this certainty and our insistence in proclaiming the Kemetic stream that infuses every African language, culture and people we study. So why hate us?
Wouldn’t it be better for you to trace your lineage back to those white slave markets of North Africa, and find your roots back in Serbia/ Albania than chastise us for doing this Godly work of resurrecting our true memory from the hands of racists.
@@Ibnafrika I did not understand a lot of what you have said because you used too much terms that I didn't have but I'll assume that all that you said is real. Who cares about ethnicity. Arguing about that is just fighting a lost battle, human population movements have happened all over the history and saying who's the most legitimate of that land. Like in Europe most people are not from there but they are actually Indo-Europeans so if they go back long enough in time you will see that they originate from around iran or Pakistan. No you won't say that or let's just go and say that everyone is from Ethiopia and we are all Africans! No no one will ever say that. Maybe instead of fighting about your ethnicity make people understand your culture better. I know that had been shattered by colonization but it's still there and you better communicate that to people instead of bragging about your origine.
@@snibo1024 'As an Algerian' you started this thread and now 'Who cares about ethnicity?'. Can you not see your words do not match? Everybody wishes to preserve a socio-cultural memory. Everybody chooses to begin their memory where they prefer. Today, although Algerians live in Africa they align themselves to a land/ people (Arabia) that they might have originated from. (Although the white flesh slave markets of North Africa might disagree).
As someone from black africa, i agree. North africans are native to north africa, just as sub-saharan africans are native to sub-saharan Africa. However confusion is created due to historical events. For example, many blacks claim to be the ancient Egyptians, but it is actually the coptics, berbers and early levantines who are native to ancient Egypt, all groups who could be considered white. However, muslim arabs are not native to ancient egypt either, creating confusion. To assuage this confusion, i think real history should be taught rather than bastardized history like that one netflix “documentary”
@@user-ci2fd8vc2f if you were talking about that movie where Cleopatra is black in it, yeah that's bull shit she wasn't even from Egypt in originally she's from greece they had no reason doing that besides of "inclusivity"
The term Africa is short and catchy in the prefer than the previous name.
Which ancient African peoples thought of Africa as a united continent? Which even conceptualized the world in terms of continents at all?
None. Persians never saw themselves as united with china the levant identified with the Indian subcontinent... Asia was only a thing to Mediterraneans
never heard of this name till today
Propably Iʼll never hear it again lol
Lol me too and I'm 'African'
you forgot to mention under the list of people exploiting africa, the even longer running islamic slave trade in which african men where castrated so that they didn't have any children, which is why you don't see "african arabians" in the same amount that you see american people of african origin. Mind you also that this trade started before the atlantic slave trade and never stopped, though did shift from the Middle East to Tunisia and other North African islamic countries who in themselves are the result of Arab imperialism.
ok I guess you referenced it in passing but not really the exploiting part
Africa has hundreds of tribes and ethnicities, each with its own language and NONE had prior knowledge of the continent's existence. They only named their lands, the lands of their own people... So, considering a native name would be even more arbitrary than continuing to use the name Africa, which has been part of the continent's identity for millennia...
Pretty sure ptolemaic egypt did
Honestly, I really like how you were so respectful during this video, I feared way worse. The only thing I disliked is the use of the term "afrocentric" because ethnocentrism is the idea that one's ethnicity is better than others and basing the value of the others' cultures on one's own; in the context of afrocentrism, it would to believe cultures and people who aren't African are lesser. Those who believe in the Alkebulan name theory don't think so, at least the majority doesn't. The definition you gave for afrocentrism is an old one which has sadly gone now and the one I explained has obviously a negative stigma attached to it because everyone who hears this, even Black people, thinks afrocentrists are ahistorical or racist or both. The absurd thing is that the old definition is at times used with the intent others will associate it with the newer one to discredit the "afrocentrists". This association has led people to come up with the term "afrocentricity", "afrocentricic" and "afrocentricist" to disassociate from the other terms. It's also really weird how the term afrocentrism is thrown around so oftenly even though we live in a eurocentric world while the term eurocentrism is barely used
Anyways, about the video idea about native names for the American double continent, I'm pretty sure Turtle Island is a pretty famous one, but not Zēmānāwac/Sēmānāwac (if you wanna research about it you prolly have to write it as Cemanahuac (whether with or without macron), I use an orthography I came up with myself to write Nāwatl, or rather more Mēxihcatlahtōlli/Mēxihcacopa since Nāwatl is a language branch just like Semitic and not a language and there isn't a standardized orthography anyhow), which is the name given to the region of the known earthly world of the Mēxihcah (Aztēcah): Mesoamerica (which isn't the same as Central America btw). But because it was their whole world it could also be used for the Americas
Bro... Eurocentric is more used than Afrocentric. In fact, I've never ever heard the word Afrocentric.
@@lbgamer6166
Ok, good for you, I do hear it more often though when talking about history or politics
If Europeans didn’t colonize Africa in the 19th century, it still likely wouldn’t have developed significantly for much of the soil is unfit for long term sustained agriculture, the cultural and linguistic diversity makes it hard to establish large centralized states (without genocide of fellow Africans) and beforehand, much of Africa was still tribal or in the iron age, and those lands which did have centralized states often utilized large scale slavery which long predated European arrival and which many African leaders wished to keep in place even as European powers like the British sought to end slavery. Slavery likely would’ve continued both from local kingdoms and from Arab slave merchants and with that, all of the harmful effects on social development that it brings
To be fair. The land would be developed. But not in the european idea of development.
Part of the reason why the Eastern Woodlands of North America was so easy for the Europeans to colonize was because the native peoples actively cleared out the underbrush but let the trees remain. Creating an open and clear enviroment that made hunting and traveling through the forests relatively easy. Their version of a highway.
Many Europeans thought that it was oddly suspicious that everything was so easy for them, and attributed it to God blessing their endeavors. But the reality was they were benefiting from the infrastructure the natives had cultivated without really realizing it.
I'm not saying natives were some fancy nature warrior, noble savages. Just that their systems of using and exploiting the land looked very different from how Europeans did it, and because of that the Europeans said they had little to none when they really had an advanced continent spanning system of forest paths, trade networks, and horticulture.
Named White
Thinks White
Writes Wrong.
Your suppositions are in your own head. You believe in your bedroom you can synthesise an entire timeline of what may have happened had your Cherished forbears not savaged and ravaged a people who did them no harm. Whose civility caused them wherever you look, caused them to welcome these haggard string haired strangers from the water. These children of Mami Wata. Pontificate all you want, it will never absolve the guilt you inherently hold in your heart. I hope this will help you in your quest to feel whole.
@@joendeo1890 thanks you
Right! Why would my people worry about large farms? My tribe lived on the Chesapeake bay/Choptank river! We could literally gather oysters from the shore(and I still do 😅) , fish and catch crabs!
Before the blight we could gather American chestnuts, we have blackberries, raspberries, turkeys, deer, ect ect the list could go on and on.
We did farm corn, squash, beans ect.
@@allisoncurtis4260that's still not development
As many have pointed out there is likely not one name that was widely used, even if adapted for the area, its so bloody big.
But I wonder about the possible proto languages and shared similarities between certain langauges. They may not have a word for the land mass, but interesting to see how that developed the history if the languages on the continent like the potential indo-european protolanguage
Only a few minutes in and I'd guess that the Al at the beginning of the name means it actually originates from Moorish (Arabic) influence, so again an exonym.
The vowels Al can be found in a lot of languages not just Arabic
I've seen the word "Ambatukam" in many memes followed by mysterious white liquid. Does Ambatukam mean Africa?
I thought that said ambatukam 💀💀💀
Well one entomology for the name Africa is that it originates from burbur
Why bother giving native names to continents ? The people groups only name places that only (or mostly) they inhabit i.e. regions and countries.
Besides there are too many languages that each continent has, so what from which language should this name originate ? Will the others even agree.
Thats the reason why continents dont have native names. Its inconvenient and a waste of time. We have kther things to worry
Humans like categorising the world so we can understand it better.
Finding a native name for African is quite insane because there are a lot of different names for Africa and at the same time there's basically no native names for Africa, because very few peoples gave name to the whole continent as we see today. I mean, Africa is connected to Asia and Europe after all.
Africa is from Ifriqya a Phoenician term for modern day Tunisia
Europe also got its name from a Phoenician princess in mythology, Europa.
@@lesterstone8595 Phoenician gaming with continent names
The 20th century was simply the US getting access to trade previously restricted to Europe in Africa by supporting independence deals that left Africa poor then using humanitarian aid to enforce neocolonial "free" markets for US oil and mining companies.
Only us Colonizers give name to Continents, the native tribes be it African, Native American, Aborigine, Slavic and Iberian didn't even know people outside their motherlands existed, let alone know what the continent they're on looks like to begin with
Bilat As-Sudan does sounds suspiciously similar to a (well two really) country in Africa though.
Sadly, you are going to have a hell of a time telling people it is a fake. Same goes for the idea that picnic is a racist term.
not true. from the jim crow museum: “The etymology of the word picnic does not suggest racist or racial overtones. Picnic was originally a 17th Century French word, picque-nique. Its meaning was similar to today's meaning: a social gathering where each attendee brings a share of the food.”
Lmfao how the hell is “picnic” racist
@@danielsmokesmids yep
True, when I informed a Gambian I used to work with that Alex Haley's Roots was an entirely made up saga, he refused to believe it.
Africa is way too divided with all the different tribes of people to have ever named itself.
I think the naming of a giant land mass is a recent thing.
Areas where people lived had names, but the whole place, and it's not an island, don't think it's possible.
If an explorer came through and returned home to his people with a name to give to the place, I can see that.
Remember, North and South Korea used to be China. Did they call themselves Asians at the time, were Indians Asian in China and vise versa
The constant statements about how afrocentrism has become extreme and aggressive really soured what was an otherwise great video. I hope you do more research into panafricanism and related topics so that you can learn.
^^^ THIS.
This video left an aftertaste...
I wholeheartedly agree. ...There was some fat that could have been trimmed.
Some viewers will like (and seem already to have fancied) that aftertaste, however, and feel free to echo--if not multiply--the same 'notes' in their comments.
Not only an "aftertaste", but the video title gives some foretaste
...that delivers.
...Some shade that survived all editing.
Nationalism is never ok
@@stefanstruger9949 I didn't say anything about nationalism as none of the movements I'm discussing are nationalist movements. Thank you.
Alkebulan likely comes from the Arabic designation of the Berber tribes in eastern Algeria, modern day name of the region is “Alkaba’il” (kabylia for westerners) meaning “the tribes” in Arabic. It was never usex to refer to the continent
0:56 *forgets to mention the transaharan slave trade conducted by middle easteners*
He didn't mention the attack on Pearl Harbour either, clearly biased and woke. /s
Well that's not related to the modern afrocentrism movement
@@zyaicobIt is
@@eingoluq no
It is practically impossible to find a truly "native" name for something as huge as a continent.
All of our modern continent names were either chosen arbitrarily (America & Australia) or derived from names for much smaller regions (Africa: Roman province based around former Carthage; Asia: a small portion of modern-day Türkiye).
To find a truly native name, several things would need to happen:
1) All the people on the continent would need to agree on a single language to take this name from.
2) They'd then have to find a language that actually contains a suitable term. Probably with a meaning like "home" or "all the land".
3) Once a suitable term has been agreed upon, it can then be loaned into all the other languages used on the continent.
On the other hand ...
If the people of Africa collectively decide to rename their continent to Alkebulan, that would basically make it a native name, regardless of its origins.
Not your best video. It feels like you didn't approach it in an entirely unbiased way. You repeatedly mentioned that afrocentrism can manifest in extreme and angry ways that can further damage the image of Africa (???) without providing any argument on that statement. You also said that renaming Africa as Alkebulan is problematic, but didn't explain why. Ok, maybe the name is not historical, maybe it's a very recent invention by those afrocentric groups that you're so scared of, but if that's the case so what?? All names are made up anyway, what does it matter that this particular name was invented recently? I don't want to assume anything, but it feels like your actual issue with the name is who created it and why they use it. I think your videos would be much more better if you actually adopted a descriptive approach, not a prescriptive one, especially if you have some unchecked biases
It is wrong, if you talk to a lot of actual African people, they’ll tell you why. Afrocentrists don’t sell a real idea of what Africa is and should be, it’s their own inaccurate and outside voice that they’re trying to push over those of people actually born on the continent. The idea of a single unified continent of Africa is itself a coloniser concept designed to diminish the immense diversity of its native inhabitants, when Afrocentrism peddles the idea of a singular African identity, it diminishes that diversity. Just look at how indigenous North African peoples often face immense racism from Afrocentrists, because they don’t fit their specific idea of what an African is and should be
@@ezrafriesner8370 A unified Africa has never been a "colonizer concept" it's obvious to anyone with two brain cells that the European Governments have known for quite some time that Africa was not unified nationally but, they probably noticed similarities between different groups. Either way a unified Africa is what is better for everyone on the continent! So, why not do it and if Alkebulan ends up being the name so, what!
Africa was an ancient term referring to a tribe in present-day Tunisia. Exemplified in eg Scipio Africanus (236-183 BC). Each country has numerous languages and tribes. Eg Tanzania has more than 156 tribes and languages as different as Chinese and English. The unification of countries was, and to some extent still is a struggle. I just wanted to let you know that there's no need for newly invented names.
Glad you've made a video on this, I was trying to find the native names for the continent in different African languages, and kept running into different translations of "Africa", then this came up, I investigated it, and only turned up black nationalists and nation of islam, which is always a bad sign. It's ironic in a way that those black nationalists undermine and overgeneralize the place they have so much reverence for, at the expense of its actual inhabitants, that's as American as it gets.
Africa in Latin does not mean sunny. Wasn't it a term borrowed from Amazigh populations which referred to caves? This was the story I heard. For reference, my source is the UA-cam channel Cogito and my basic knowledge of Latin as an Italian
afrane or something
You mentioned the Atlantic slave trade but not the Islamic slave trade that went on before during and after the Atlantic slave trade and was far more brutal
No it wasn't, this is a common far right talking point trying to justify Atlantic slavery.
@@PlatinumAltariaplease explain. Just curious.
@@PlatinumAltaria i dont think it jusifies it, not was it more brutal but it is a neglected part of history
I would not say the endonyms itself is problematic, but rather the perceived need to legitimize it by claiming it's historical and/or predates the exonym. Endonyns need not predate their exonyms.
Maybe pan africanism is a dumb concept created by people born outside of africa. Just a thought.
You dumb
This is a simplistic reading, many African leaders embraced afro-centrism themselves.
Pam African would be great if it started in the 13th century but if anything would work would be black pan Europeans colonized Africa because even when Dutch were fighting against Africans the French wouldn’t sell guns to Africans because they thought it would be better for thier white enemy to get the land than for a African to get support .. nato is just a group of racists
I like how we always talk about the scramble for Africa when it comes to colonization, while the Arabs colonized the northern quarter of the continent much earlier and haven’t left since 😂
Pretty sure the current corruption is their problem and not something my great grandpa did lol
Then you don't know history
@@darkballerz No... Africa is a terrible place. The only country that seems to do very well at all is Botswana (if you discount one fifth of them having AIDS). Africans are just generally jealous of European domination and want to invent this idea of a African empire consisting of all black people. It is NEVER gonna happen because Africans aren't and have never been good enough to dominate the continent. They have too many enemies within their own continent that would want to be the dominating force in creating such an empire it is why so many African nations are in a civil war all the time.
@@darkballerzu just don't want to take accountability for ur own failures
Awesome as always!
Whoa. You're a white, British person speaking on this topic? That is quite brave of you
The vast majority of African people will say the same thing. A lot of them find Afrocentrism insulting and a dumbing down of the immense diversity of their cultures
This video has almost 40K views: The name "Africa" became widely used after the continent's countries gained independence in the mid-20th century. However, this landmass has been known by various names throughout history. Recently, some Pan-Africanists have proposed renaming the continent "Alkebulan," citing an old French text that claims this name was used by Northwest AFRICAN Moors.
This proposal has sparked debate, raising important questions: Is adopting a name from an ancient text fundamentally different from keeping a colonizer-given name? If the continent had been named "Rhodesia" or "New Belgian" instead of "AFRICA" by colonizers who officially named the continet, would the suggestion of "Alkebulan" face similar mockery?
Collectively African nations and its peoples on the continent and within the diaspora should have the right to collectively rename their continent if they ever decided to do so based on their shared beliefs and identity. It's presumptuous for outsiders to ridicule or discourage such a decision. This debate illustrates the lingering effects of colonialism on perceptions of names and identity, while also showcasing African and PanAfricanist efforts to reclaim their heritage and self-definition.
The influence of Arabic on African languages and names is complex and often disputed. Many place names and words commonly thought to have Arabic origins are actually indigenous:
• Timbuktu: Often said to come from Arabic, but likely derived from Berber languages.
• Swahili: While heavily influenced by Arabic, the name itself may have African origins.
• Senegal: Sometimes attributed to Arabic, but more likely from the Wolof language.
• Zanzibar: Often linked to Arabic, but the exact origin is disputed.
• Sudan: While commonly thought to be from Arabic, some argue for indigenous African origins.
• Kenya: Debated origin, with some claiming Arabic roots and others asserting purely African etymology.
• Mali: Sometimes linked to Arabic, but likely from Mandinka or other local languages.
This pattern reveals a tendency to attribute African words to external sources, underestimating the richness of African languages and cultures. This lingering colonial mindset complicates efforts to reclaim indigenous names and identities.
The Alkebulan debate goes beyond choosing a new name; it challenges established narratives about language origins and cultural influences in Africa. Ultimately, Africans or those in the African diaspora should have the freedom to define and name themselves, whether by reclaiming ancient terms, embracing Arabic influences, or creating new names. The crucial factor is that these choices originate from within Africa, not imposed externally.
There is no such pan african identity or history...
Just like Asia its far too big for thay
Fake or not. Alkebulan sounds very cool. Shame it's yet another continent name that starts with A.
sounds but doesn't really mean anything
Don't forget Ambatukam
I don't get it, I speak English so why wouldn't I call places by thier English names? Like I don't go calling Germany Deustchland except when speaking German
Cuz unlike Africans, Germans don't have an inferiority complex
I hate treating africa as unified landmass. Oh is this how some people on the continent call the continent? Good, don't claim everyone does, i hate people who do that. You won't find two more different neighboring world than arabs and blacks yet some people say africa, you know Rastafarianis and sheeesh, and to bunch together all subsaharan African together is idiotic, I'd say there are 4 subsaharan civilisations, but that's also reductive. Antiracists are most ignorant people around while racist, like yours truly try to understand other ethnicities for higher efficiency and accuracy.
He actually does mention the near impossibility of all the diverse languages and cultures of africa all sharing one name for the continent in the video
Did you just say you're racist?
@@User-dyn yeah i watched it, I'm not talking about him despite using word "you".
@@player17wastaken YES 🗿 extremely.
@@10hawell wtf
Interesting idea... Although I don't think the concept of continent is intuitive (their our country here and their country there and the land under it is just that, land). That make the probably of any continent having a home grown word for it rather thin, let alone one being adopted in every language there. That being said, the Mediterranean civilisations had the concept of continent, I would look in late Egypt empire for one.
Far from Wakanda, most of the continent was in the stone age until the colonizers arrived, and may have remained that way for the next 10,000 years if left alone (which is not a problem...it might in fact have been a better outcome). Thus, there was no idea of what a continent even was, hence no native name until the colonizers arrived and brought new ideas and technologies. Thus, a native term like "land" would have had to be used. As an analogy, that's like if Europeans didn't like the word for Europe (assuming it were non-native) and so decided that every European country would use the Slovenian word for land (ethnic group that gives its word picked out of a hat) for all of Europe. Do people think that would be better?
Err, no. Quite a lot of the continent had reached the use of iron roughly at the same time as Europeans. Sudan, Simbabwe, Ethopia, West Africa and the Suaheli-speaking city states all had their own high culture and trade routes over several hundred years.
The Mansa Musa of Mali was said being so rich that his pilgrimage to Arabia brought about a financial crisis from all the gold he spent.
@@fermintenava5911 Maybe so. I'm not an expert on the subject, so feel free to keep the discussion going. However, I did say "most", not "all" of the continent. I would have imagined most of the development being on the coasts and areas that bordered Arab trading routes. I mean, you mention Musa of Mali. Musa is "Moses" in Arabic. The colonists had already arrived...the Arab ones that many forget about, since society only focuses on one group of colonists and slave traders. How about the areas away from Arab traders and especially further south and in the interior? Either way, I think you could say the same thing about the Americas. Some Aztec (etc) and Incan exceptions, but by and large hunter-gatherers across the continent, again, not that that's necessarily a bad thing. I hope the Amazon rainforest remains a land of people in loincloths rather than a place of high-rise apartments or cattle grazing land.
@@Rationalificthe caveat of "most" still isn't really true. by and large, by the time of European colonisation in Africa there were nation states, metalworking, and agriculture (ie Malian empire, Benin, Zanzibar, Ethiopia). it seems a little colonial to assume that the majority of the continent was in the neolithic and that technologies that were available were necessarily the result of colonisation. as for Arab colonisation, as much as it very much happened, mansa musa, though a Muslim with an Arabic name was a king of the west African Malian empire, and was believed to be the richest man on earth at the time. iron working and other metallurgy was certainly available to Africans, with the earliest evidence dating to 1200BC.
@@RationalificWith regards to the Americas being populated by hunter gatherer societies, this is still not entirely true. it seems that a lot of pre-Columbian settlement in the Americas had agriculture (where do you think we get new world crops like potatoes, pumpkins, tomatoes and maize from otherwise), and there is some evidence for iron working in the missisipian culture in the 1500s. while hunter gatherer societies are not necessarily any more primitive than our own ones, the perception that precolonial America and Africa were somehow stuck in the neolithic is still used to justify colonialism
@@aaaaagggggggghhhhhhMost of African tribes were not even using the wheel (let alone written language) by the time the colonists arrived, so your examples of advanced culture/technology are very much exceptions.
7:19 this Garden of Eden come from the afrocentric theory that Garden of Eden is in Africa and Adam is Africa
You missed one of the three colonizers and slave traders of Africa, and it is actually the biggest, worst, longest of the three. The Arab slave trade actually lasted into the 20th century.
>into the 20th century
All empires had slaves into the 20th century
@@burner555 What do you mean?
@@HesderOleh a basic look at history will tell you everyone had slaves even during the 20th century
And the Middle East still uses slaves *today*
@@burner555 people do all sorts of crimes. Slavery is illegal now everywhere. There is legal near slavery in the Middle East, but there was actually fully legal actual slavery until the 20th century there.
This is a common apologist argument for European slavery.
I once heard a theory that the names of the continents around the Mediterranean Sea were of Roman origin in reference to their direction. Of course, Mediterranean means middle of the world, where Rome is. Africa is land to the south, Asia is land to the east, and Europe is land to the north. I never had much confidence in this theory, but did find it satisfying.
And, Atlantis would have been land to the west.
Really irritating listening to non African people that has no concept of its history outside of the European lenses talk about Africa. 🤦🏾♂️
Cope and seethe
Basically... your continent needs to be small enough (e.g. Europe) to be noticed at all by the natives. Otherwise the natives would say they live "on the earth" or "under the sky" or other not so informative sayings, instead of naming a continent...
Nah
Europe wasn't named as a continent either really, Europe and Asia (in their original greek forms) were originally just the names for the west and east coast of the Aegean sea respectively (separated by Bosporus). The greeks then continued to call any land west/east of Bosporus that as well until they ran out of land and boom, modern notion of a continent was born (hence the, at the time at least, arbitrary line across the Eurasia)
I suggest calling the subcontinents and continents names which mean "land" in their predominant common native origin ancestal languages
When you get colonized so freaking hard that you believe your ancestral homeland was the way your colonizer's religion is described.
Wonderful video!
you sound like docudubery (yt channel) but if he was speaking seriously, interesting
Africa's modern name comes from the kingdom of Aferag that was once in centered in the Horn of Africa.
No. The Romans named Africa after the Afri tribe in Tunesia
@@deutschermichel5807 Yes sorry I confused it with something else
Ah, ultra-nationalist half-cooked insane theories. Such a fantastic topic. I like watching a youtuber that covers obscure and niche Russian games that are this same kind of absurd insanity of nonsensical ideas mashed together into a nonsensical ball that somehow for some people seems logical and valid. It's fascinating.