I learned today from a Moroccan friend that “Berber” is a term that could be offensive, and that “Berber” is actually Amazigh, or Amazigh is the correct term.
What do you think about changing the name in the game to be more accurate?
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Seems reasonable to me.
Might have to get a few sentences in some campaign cutscenes re-recorded but I don’t think that should stop anything.
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And what about Tuaregs? You’re leaving them away with a rename like this. They may get offended as well
Certainly, the present Berber civilization in Age of Empires 2 actually represents the Amazigh people, not the Tuaregs. I am not advocating for a split similar to the Indian situation. However, the Berbers’ naval bonus in the game does indeed correspond to the maritime strength of the Amazigh people.
The Tuareg if I’m not mistaken are the nomadic pastoralist.
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As a Tuareg descendant myself from Algeria, I can confirm that the term Berbere is a pejorative. “Berber” means “Foreigner whose language we don’t understand” (Sorry for my English).
But Amazigh means more * Indigenous peoples", those who are not arabic. But I think it’s also wrong to use this term as a civilisation. Because the Amazigh refers to different people.
Better to split the Berbers into differents civs (Tuaregs, Kabyles, Mozabites, Rifains, Iznassen, Jbalas, Zayanes, Zenagas, Guanches etc.).
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The word might have its origins as an ####### ### through all these hundreds of years, it evolved to refer in the english language to the native peoples of the Sahara. There’s nothing wrong with that. No ones gives the name Berber a negative connotation. It’s basically a translation.
There a lot of examples of peoples or countries names that have similar origins. China (and thus “chinese”) is called “Zhōngguó” in chinese. Completely different etimilogic origins.
Germans are called “German”, “Deutsch”, “Alemán”, “Tedesco”… each word from a different origin.
The Selk’nam natives get their name from a word the Tehuelche natives used to name them, while their other name “Ona” comes from the Yagan, another native tribe.
Edit: Forgot to add. I say this because Amazigh is the “accurate” name just because it’s the word used by Amazighs to call themselves.
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Berbers do. But it’s not the point, the Germans and French could be aslo offended if we call them today Teutons or Franks. For example, in France it happens that people use the world Teutons to speak about german and it’s usually pejorative.
Europeans call themselves Europeans, it doesn’t mean we need a civ called “Europeans”. Of course, Microsoft can’t satisfy everyone and make a game with thousands of civilizations, but it would still be more appropriate to split the current Berbers.
I feel like if it’s “good enough” for Wikipedia, it’s good enough for the game. For contrast, the Wikipedia page for “g*psies” is called “Romani People” instead.
I wouldn’t mind the change tho, I would be down for changing some of the exonyms in general, like, I doubt they’ll change the Sarracens, but I never liked that name…
What do you think about changing the name in the game to be more accurate?
Berber is the correct english term. Stop confusing people. The sense of language is to be understandable.
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The case of Saracens is different. It’s an outdated (by many centuries) and ambiguos term nowadays used only in the context of medieval holy war.
I wouldn’t mind them being named Saracens if it was a translation of the word Arab, but it isn’t. The english word for عربي ('arabi) is Arab. (And that’s what they should be named). Different story than Berbers and Amazigh