Three Names Ethiopians are Trying to Impose on Eritreans

Eritrean girl wearing traditional Medri-Bahri dress (Credit: Kikish Abraha)

Three Names Ethiopians are Trying to Impose on Eritreans


Names play an important role in human interactions. They provide us a way to identify people and places. In some cases, the meaning of names can even provide valuable insight about a place or a person. Names for groups of people can also be used for political objectives. As a result, foreign names, especially those coming from hostile countries or people should be rejected if most of the people its intended for don't support it.

Here are three names politically motivated Ethiopians are trying to impose on Eritrea and Eritreans:

1. Tigray-Tigrinya is a false term used by politically motivated Ethiopians to lump Eritrea's Tigrinya ethnic group with Ethiopia's Tigray ethnic group. In doing so, they seek to chisel at the edifice of what what it means to be Eritrean, since Tigrinya people make up the largest ethnic group in Eritrea. Without question, the Tigrinya people do not regard Tigrayans to be of the same ethnicity as them. Both of these ethnic groups hail from separate ancient kingdoms (Medri-Bahri and Tigray) and have fought and died for separate wars (Tigrinya: ELF and EPLF, Tigrayans: TLF and TPLF).

However, none of these historical facts are even necessary to mention when you consider ethnic identity is mostly a self-ascribed psychological term. According to Professor Joshua A. Fishman, the "psychological dimension of ethnicity is perhaps the most important because, regardless of variations in the biological, cultural, and social domains, if a person self-identifies as a member of a particular ethnic group, then he or she is willing to be perceived and treated as a member of that group. Thus, self-ascribed and other-ascribed ethnic labels are the overt manifestations of individuals' identification with a particular ethnicity."¹

2. Mereb-Melash, which means the kingdom "beyond the Mereb (river)", has been used to name Eritrea's pre-Italian occupation period by Ethiopians and some historians. The only problem is it's not a name the ancestors of Eritreans had for their own kingdom. This is a Tigrayan (Ethiopian) name to describe another kingdom neighboring theirs. Think about it, who would name their country the kingdom "beyond the Mereb" river when they're the country beyond the Mereb river?

The real name of Eritrea's pre-Italian kingdom was Medri-Bahri (Land of the Sea). With its capital in Deberwa, Medri-Bahri was a prominent kingdom in the region between the 14th-19th century. What separated this kingdom from others in the region is it had a unique political process in which citizens elected their king to power. Once elected, the king was given the title of "Bahri-Negassi" (Sea King). To prevent a monarchy from being established, the Bahri-Negassi's family were prohibited from becoming future kings. Medri Bahri's borders with its southern neighbor, Tigray, was marked by the Mereb and Setit (Tekeze) rivers, which these boundaries are still used to define Eritrea's and Ethiopia's borders.

3. Amiche: In 1999, the brutal Ethiopian dictatorship expelled 80,000 Eritreans and Ethiopians of Eritrean origins at gunpoint and confiscated their property. These Eritreans were known by Ethiopians as "Amiche" - a term that takes its meaning from an Italian company based in Addis Ababa (The Automotive manufacturing Company of Ethiopia [AMCE]) which assembles imported car parts from Italy to make cars which are exported. Like AMCE vehicles, amiches had parts (parents) that came from one country (Eritrea) and were assembled in another (Ethiopia). So when these 'amiches' were expelled to Eritrea, many of them adopted this term as a pseudo identity, even though it was originally used to alienate them by their former Ethiopian countrymen.

Part of the reason why some of the expelled Eritreans clung on to the term Amiche was because it was seen in a favorable light in Ethiopia. When people heard Amiche in Addis Ababa, they perceived a well educated Eritrean who was wealthy or better off than the average Ethiopian. But when they were expelled to Eritrea, they no longer were seen as the upper class of society. Even the education advantage they enjoyed over most Addis Ababans wasn't there in Asmara, since most Asmarinos were far more educated than Ethiopians. So the abrupt transition from the upper class of society in Addis Ababa to, at best, a middle class existence in Asmara was a tough transition for many of them to handle. This caused many of them to cling to the term Amiche; a name that was associated with a high-class society as much as it was to a nationality.


^{[1]Handbook of Language & Ethnic Identity by Joshua A. Fishmanm, p. 115}

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