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 place with its own epistemologies and more a geopolitical construct shaped by external interests, be it strategic, economic, or military. This is how language continues its work long after formal colonial rule has ended. The power to name becomes the power to define reality, to decide what is visible and what remains unseen. And unless these names are questioned, they keep reproducing the same limited ways of understanding.

The issue with the term “Middle East” is not only that it is geographically vague, but that it carries forward an entire way of thinking rooted in Western dominance. As Edward Said argues in Orientalism, the idea of the “East” was never just about direction; it was a constructed category through which the West defined and positioned others. The “East” was imagined as exotic, irrational, emotional, even erotic, in contrast to a West that saw itself as rational and superior. When we continue to use the term “Middle East,” we are unknowingly repeating the same structure of thought. The word “East” still places these countries in a position of difference, as something to be observed, explained, or managed, rather than as self-defining spaces with their own centres and meanings.

Across the region and its diasporas, there is a growing effort to resist these imposed labels and reclaim the right to self-definition. Many have begun using the term SWANA — South West Asia and North Africa — as an alternative to “Middle East.” It rejects the idea of being positioned as someone else’s “East” and instead names the region in its own geographic terms. Alongside this, there is a broader push in academic, cultural, and activist spaces to question inherited terminology, revive local names, and insist on more precise and self-representative ways of speaking. This is why the growing use of the term SWANA is significant. Unlike “Middle East,” SWANA attempts to describe the region in geographically accurate and non-Eurocentric terms. It locates it within its own spatial reality. More importantly, it encourages a broader intellectual and political movement: the decolonisation of language.

Decolonising language is not about etymology alone. It is about reclaiming authority; it is about becoming aware of how certain terms were created, whose perspectives they reflect, and what they obscure. More importantly, it involves making conscious choices to use language that is more accurate, self-defined, and respectful of the people it describes. When we continue to use terms rooted in colonial structures, we unconsciously reproduce those structures, even solidify them. We accept a worldview in which certain regions are defined by their proximity to Western centres rather than by their own histories, contexts and identities.

Critics may argue that “Middle East” is simply a convenient, widely understood label, but that sense of convenience begins to fall apart the moment one understands the history behind it. Once you see that the term was never neutral, that it was shaped through imperial needs to simplify, group, and manage diverse regions, it becomes difficult to ignore how limited and reductive it is. Understanding this history makes it clear why decentring terms like “Middle East” matters today. It is not about replacing one label with another, but about challenging the habit of seeing the world through inherited hierarchies. Decentring these terms allows us to question the very structures through which knowledge about the world is produced and circulated.

What makes this more significant is how easily it disappears into everyday use. The fact that it feels so normal, neutral, even practical — but that is exactly how such ideas survive. “Middle East” continues to group diverse nations into a single, simplified category while reinforcing the notion that they exist in relation to the West. This becomes apparent in global discourse and media coverage, where the region is often spoken about as a single, unstable entity, rather than a collection of distinct histories and lived realities. In this way, the term does more than describe a place; it keeps alive an older colonial gaze, one that still shapes how the region is understood, represented, and responded to in the present.

At a time of ongoing war and heightened global awareness, one thing stands out: language is never neutral. It holds within it layers of history, power, and perspective. If we are serious about a more fair and accurate understanding of the world, that effort has to begin with the words we choose to keep using. The question is no longer whether terms like “Middle East” are problematic. The question is whether we are willing to change the way we speak, and in doing so, the way we see.

Hania AfridiThe writer is a literature graduate whose work explores how stories influence thought, identity, and imagination.

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