THE POWER OF A NAME: ETHNONYMS AND AN OTTOMAN MAP OF 1904
THE POWER OF A NAME: ETHNONYMS AND AN OTTOMAN MAP OF 1904

Summary/Abstract: The main idea of the text is to present how the use of certain names, in this case ethnonyms, can actually shape the history. It starts with a description of a map of the Balkan Peninsula issued by the Ottoman Empire in 1904, written in Ottoman language, with Arabic script. The map itself seemingly does not show anything new, only the known outcome of the Balkan rebellions until the last one for that time. But the author then shortly repeats again the known events that resulted in the constellation shown on the map and then dwells on the interest of the one of the Great Powers for the last of the countries that raised a rebellion: why, when supporting it, it backed its attitudes with a long forgotten ethnonym, which by the way was wrongly used? The text then concentrates on the historical use of that ethnonym and the factors that brought it to its revival, leading to an interesting question: does its use and its history reveal a possible ‘power behind the power’? The text ends with a conclusion containing rather an unusual fact: that a use of an ethnonym can represent a carefully shaped policy and that names, in this case ethnonyms, can have a power to define history.

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