For thousands of years, white colonizers spread across the globe like a plague of locusts, absorbing, destroying, and changing everything in their path. They tried to take everything from us, but we've been pushing back by reclaiming our names.
Kemet was a true civilization before any other recorded nations on Earth. The word "Kemet" means “black land” or “land of the blacks.” When ancient Greeks discovered the land in 525 BCE, they changed the nation's name to Egypt.
Egypt may have kept its colonized name, but many other African nations have not. Zambia, Zimbabwe, Guinea-Bissau, and several additional countries chose to change or reclaim their names after declaring independence from their colonizers.
It isn't just cities and countries reclaiming their names either. For so long, our beautiful names for our children were ridiculed. Names that originated from our spiritual roots and native lands were deemed somehow unworthy.
By reclaiming our names and giving ourselves names anew, we are rejecting the norms colonialism has forced upon us and, more importantly, defining who we are on our terms.