Words are often chosen without much thought. And precisely for that reason, they reveal a person’s inner world in its most unguarded form. The way we name something shows what it means to us, our closeness to it, or our distance from it.
When we say “Eid al-Fitr,” we carry a meaning distilled from an entire month. Within that word, there is patience. There is intention. There are days shaped not simply by hunger or thirst, but by the quiet bond one builds with oneself. There is the gentle joy of iftar tables, the drowsy stillness of pre-dawn meals, the effort to turn inward over the course of a month. And the holiday… it is the ease that follows all of this. A sense of completion.
But when you say “Sugar Feast,” you take only a visible fragment of that whole. The deeper layers of meaning quietly fall away, as if the holiday were nothing more than sweets given to children, a light and pleasant bustle…
And yet, some words are not merely choices. Sometimes, they are a way of creating distance.
The other day, I paused over a brief message from my daughter’s tennis school. It seemed like a routine notice: “Due to the Sugar Feast holiday, this weekend’s classes will not take place.” I read it, closed it… but it didn’t close in my mind.
Because sometimes what lingers is not what is said, but how it is said. Not calling something by its own name… is often a subtle form of distancing, done almost unconsciously. A softer, quieter way of saying, “It’s not mine.”
This is not unfamiliar to these lands.
There was a time when some chose not to call a headscarf a “headscarf.” They called it something else. Then came harsher, more exclusionary expressions. By changing a word, they tried to transform its meaning. Because they knew the power of language: what you call something shapes how you think about it, how you discuss it, how you position it.
Names are not just names. They are perspectives. Of course, not everyone who says “Sugar Feast” does so with a conscious intent to distance. There are habits, childhood expressions, the ease of everyday language.
And yet, I can’t help but ask: Is it really so difficult to call something by the name given to it by those to whom it belongs?
Living together is not just about sharing the same city. It is not only about speaking the same language. Sometimes, it is about meeting in the same word. About showing respect for each other’s worlds, if only through the names we use. Because when you call something by the wrong name, you leave its door half open. And inside, a quiet distance remains.
That brief message from the tennis school may have been ordinary for the person who wrote it. But for the one reading it, it carried meaning. Because words are not only what is written, they are also what is received. That is why this is no longer just a matter of what we call a holiday. It becomes a matter of remembering the subtleties of living together. Of being able to touch each other’s values, at least through language.
Words are the quietest, yet most powerful mirror of a society. Not only what we say, but how we say it, reveals who we are. The words we choose show what we stand close to, and what we stand apart from. And sometimes… The deepest distances are hidden in the smallest words.
In documentary filmmaking, I’ve noticed this again and again: people reveal themselves most through the words they choose without thinking. What they emphasize, what they leave out… that’s where an unseen world opens up. Beliefs, assumptions, distances, proximities…
All of it carried within a single word. That is why words matter. Calling a holiday by its proper name is not just a matter of correctness. It is a matter of respect.
The simplest, most visible form of living together. Perhaps it really is this simple: To call something by the name given by those to whom it belongs.
Because some names are not just words.
They are memory.
They are belief.
They are life.
And above all… they are belonging.
