Proper Names in the Moroccan Sahara

A Semantic Approach

Abstract

Through this article, we seek to draw attention to the linguistic specificities of the names of prominent figures of the Moroccan Sahara, which are characterized by a cultural richness that is Sahrawi, Moroccan, Arabic, and Islamic. The study presents the names of media figures translated in the book “New Sources for the History of the Saharan Scholars«, which includes approximately three hundred names of men who lived in the following centuries. These are old and modern names, some of which are still in use today, including neglected ones, and some are written down in historical sources. Therefore, the aim of this work is to present a linguistic approach based on classification, description, and analysis of the most important linguistic phenomena that names reveal at several levels of indication, dictionary, sound, morphology, and derivation. Hence, we identify the names in an alphabetically ordered list, whether repeated or not, and classify them based on their semantic meanings in terms of indication, then analyze their morphological patterns and changing phonetic forms. All this reflects the naming characteristics in this geographical domain and their significance in the Moroccan linguistic geography that merges between Standard Arabic and dialect, which stems from the existence of linguistic diversity in Morocco. A diversity from which linguistic atlases branch out, and its extent is linked to the cultural, civilizational, Moroccan, Arab, and Islamic background