For most of modern history, the world has not just been described, but defined by the West. The names we use for regions, peoples, and histories are not neutral descriptors; they are products of power. One of the clearest examples of this is the term “Middle East” — a term so normalised that its origins and implications are rarely questioned, constructing a world arranged from one viewpoint, where entire regions are located not by who they are, but by where they fall in relation to someone else.

The term “Middle East” is widely attributed to Alfred Thayer Mahan, who used it in 1902 to describe a strategically significant area between Arabia and India. It was later popularised and institutionalised by Valentine Chirol, embedding itself within British imperial discourse. Crucially, the term is not geographically objective; it depends on a borrowed point of view. “Middle” to whom? “East” of what? The answer is Europe. The phrase situates an entire region in reference to Western spatial imagination, reducing diverse geographies and cultures into a peripheral extension of a European centre, as if their existence begins only once it is measured against the West.

This is not an isolated case. Colonial language has long functioned as a tool of control, contributing to categorising, simplifying, and renaming in ways that make domination seem necessary and harmless. To name is to define, and to define is to exercise power. When regions are labelled through an external gaze, they are often stripped of their internal diversity and historical self-understanding. The “Middle East” becomes less a........

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