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Journal of Applied Language and Culture Studies, Issue 1, 2018, pp. 107-131

Ait and Oulad Toponyms: Geographical Distribution

and Linguistic Implications1

Daouia Laaboudi & Mohamed Marouane

Chouaib Doukkali University, El Jadida, Morocco

Abstract

Names beginning with Ait and Oulad represent an outstanding pair of village names in Morocco based on (a) their frequency of occurrence compared to other names and (b) their being typically representative of the two mother tongues of the country, Moroccan Arabic and Amazigh. The present paper explores the distribution of this pair of toponyms throughout 14 Moroccan provinces and quantifies the frequency of occurrence and how far they co-occur or exclude each other in the same region. The distribution of these two toponyms in each province is compared to the number of speakers of Moroccan Arabic and Amazigh residing therein. The aim is to find out whether the dominance of Ait or Oulad correlates with the dominance of Amazigh and Moroccan Arabic respectively. The study is based on an exhaustive list of villages inventoried throughout the Moroccan territory by High Commissioner of Plan (HCP) and on statistics related to mother tongues speakers in Morocco based on the 2014 Population Census conducted by the same official statistics institution. A quantitative analysis of the frequency of occurrence of the pair of names is undertaken based on the theoretical model of extensive toponymy elaborated by Tent (2013). The findings indicate that the frequency of occurrence of Ait and Oulad-names correlates with the rate of Amazigh and MA speakers respectively, which makes the two toponyms accurate linguistic variables to investigate the distribution of the languages they represent.

1 We would like to thank HCP and ONEE officers for their cooperation and for

providing valuable toponym and population statistics data. This study has also

benefited from comments of scholars at the 4th

International Conference on Cultures

and Languages in Contact organized by the Applied Language and Culture Studies

Laboratory (ALCS). We also would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their

comments on an earlier version of this article.

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Keywords: toponym, Amazigh, Moroccan Arabic, isogloss, language contact, geographical distribution

0. Introduction

Toponymy, or place naming, generally reflects the type of relationship language speakers entertain with space; it shows how they conceive of, appropriate or delimit the geographical environment they inhabit. People give names to practically any portion of space, be it small or large, horizontal or vertical; and they thus grant it the status of an identified and delimited entity. The choice of a place name can sometimes be random but it is in most cases intentional and systematic. The names given to different places reveal, most commonly, a subjective conceptual perception that people construct about and associate with these entities. Therefore, toponyms do generally refer to different things such as outstanding fauna and flora items, landscape, people, and important events, etc.

Assigning persons‘ names to places like cities, avenues and plazas is one of the widely adopted naming strategies that aims to establish a relation of appropriation, affiliation or delimitation between people and space. When people‘s names are given to places, the intention is either to honour the person whose name is given to the place or to show a kind of affiliation or appropriation of the place by the people who named it.

Linguistically, toponyms are significant in the sense that they reveal and preserve language identity of the communities who live or lived in different places. They can therefore serve as traces of languages spoken in an area and eventual indicators of language isoglosses between communities speaking different languages2. It follows, then, that the dominance of toponyms from a particular language in a geographical area would signify that speakers inhabiting the place are or were speakers of that language. Similarly, place names where toponyms from more than one language coexist are not uncommon and would entail that this area has been inhabited by people who spoke different languages. Curchin (2011) pointed out in this respect that toponyms tend to be conservative, remaining in use for centuries after their original meaning has been forgotten; they thus serve as linguistic fossils, preserving traces of all the language groups that settled there.

2 ‗Volubilis‘ and ‗Luxus‘ are Roman names of ancient Moroccan cities which strand

as a trace of Roman language that was then spoken by settlers of these cities.

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Based on a simple observation, we can say that toponyms in Morocco are basically either Amazigh or Arabic names3. Amazigh and Arabic names are given to cities, towns, villages, counties, districts, rivers, planes, valleys, oases, and other portions of space. The distribution depends on the dominant variety in an area. Yet, many scholars state that most places in the country have preserved their old Amazigh names and thus makes this category more dominant than toponyms from any other language (Skounti, 2012; Hart, 2000; Boukous, 2012, Benabbou & Behnstedt, 2001; Azayko, 2004; among others). Boukous (2012, p. 268) states that Amazigh is ―omnipresent in the Moroccan space through toponymy‖. In the same vein, Hart (2000, p. 26) in his study on Moroccan tribe names asserts that ―the Berber element is very much more than just residue. It is, indeed, the base of the whole North African edifice‖. Similarly, Azayko (2004) emphasizes the position of Amazigh as the language of North-African toponymy, arguing that knowing Amazigh is crucial for scholars to be able to provide an ―objective understanding and an accurate interpretation of a large number of names perpetually engraved on the territory of North Africa‖ (Azayko (2004, p. 7)4.

A sociolinguistic study of Moroccan toponymy can be a very reliable source of accurate evidence on the distribution of languages and varieties and eventual demarcations between them. A large scale sociolinguistic study of toponyms in Morocco can help draw a linguistic map that would show languages which were and are still spoken in different areas. It should be noted that sociolinguistic studies of Moroccan toponyms are scarce, and that most of the studies are semantic in nature and focus on classification of toponyms depending on their semantic reference (cf. Yeou, 2011; Allati, 1999; among others).

The present article investigates the distribution of the village names beginning with the pair Ait and Oulad through fourteen Moroccan provinces. The choice is based on the representativeness of these provinces of the Amazigh and MA speaking areas as well as their contact zones. The study is based on an almost exhaustive list of Moroccan villages established by the Moroccan power and water distribution office, ONEE. The article provides an analysis of the frequency of the occurrence of Ait and Oulad toponyms in the selected provinces and investigates correlation between the rate of occurrence of each of the toponyms and the dominant variety spoken in that province. In addition, the study draws on official statistics of the latest Moroccan Population

3 There are names from other languages such as Spanish, Casablanca, Castillojos,

and French Louisa, Luis Gentils, Ben Yakhlef and Yousoufia today (Boujrouf &

Hassani, 2008). 4 Our translation.

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Census provided by the Moroccan statistics and planning institution viz. the High Commissioner of Plan (HCP) to explore the extent to which the rate of Amazigh or MA speakers correlates with the frequency of occurrence of Ait or Oulad place names.

When scanning a detailed map of Moroccan regions or an exhaustive list of villages, one cannot miss the frequent occurrence of names starting with Ait or Oulad in most provinces with rural territory. This must be the outcome of a productive naming strategy. The fact that Moroccan rural population chose to name its villages using the filiations or attributive form Ait and Oulad, just like their tribe name, must be the result of contact between Arabic and Berber. Moreover, the fact that Ait and Oulad are semantically and functionally parallel and almost equivalent and stand as striking indicators of linguistic identity and ethnic background of the inhabitants of these places makes this pair of names interesting and worth studying.

In addition, Ait and Oulad represent a typical pair of two related items meaning ‗descendants of‘ or ‗affiliates of a tribe or a place‘. They are also typically representative of the two mother tongues spoken in Morocco, namely Amazigh and MA, and they accordingly refer to the ethnic and linguistic background of the people living in places bearing these names. Further, the two toponyms are the most recurrent and diffused village names in Morocco, compared to any other toponyms. This wide diffusion and occurrence is quantitatively very significant and would have interesting implications on the geographical distribution of native speakers of Amazigh and MA varieties in Morocco.

The present study addresses two main questions. First, what is the frequency of occurrence of Ait and Oulad village names in the selected provinces? Second, what can this frequency reveal about the distribution of Amazigh and MA varieties in these provinces and in Morocco as a whole? Considering the current demographic situation, and based on HCP‘s 2014 Population Census data, it would be interesting to investigate whether there is a correlation between the rate of occurrence of these toponyms and the number of MA and Amazigh speakers in each of the provinces. A further more ambitious question would address the extent to which the distribution of Ait and Oulad names can serve as a linguistic indicator of a continuum and isogloss between MA and Amazigh varieties in Morocco, and whether the findings on the distribution of these toponyms can provide a geographical guide to draw isoglosses between Amazigh and MA speaking areas?

This paper consists of 5 main sections in addition to an introduction and a conclusion. The first main section provides a background for the study, delimiting its scope, discussing the process of village naming and

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reviewing previous research on toponymy. The second and third sections address the theoretical framework adopted in the study and the methodological procedures followed in the collection and analysis of the data, respectively. Sections four and five describe the results obtained in the study and offer an analysis thereof.

1. Village Names and Mother Tongues in Morocco

This section discusses the process of village naming and the distribution of the mother tongues in Morocco.

1.1 Village names

Toponyms bear strong traces of the languages spoken by the people who inhabited or transited through a place. Moroccan toponyms throughout history are from Amazigh as maintained by El Fasi (1984) who states that:

The various civilizations which succeed one another in Morocco did not leave any significant traces in its toponymy. It can even be said that at present there are practically no names of foreign origin to be found, except those of Phoenician or Carthaginian origin. These languages are closely related to Berber. The names of many towns and villages were changed by the French, but as these changes were not spontaneous, being imposed by the colonial power, the foreign names disappeared as soon as independence was proclaimed and the places reverted to their old names, which had never been forgotten by the inhabitants‖. (El Fassi, 1984, p. 18)

Toponyms ‗of foreign origin‘, on the other hand, as El Fassi puts it, do not seem to include Arabic place names whose presence is widely attested especially as anthroponyms assigned to regions populated by Arab tribes and more recently as official names given by the Moroccan administration to cities districts (Hart, 1992; El Hilali 1994, Boujrouf & El Hassani 2008).

Historically, Arabic place names were attested in periods dating back to the medieval Morocco as stated by Sedra (2009) in a study of the toponyms listed on the itinerary of passengers from Marrakech to Ceuta in medieval Morocco. He maintains that certain villages were referred to then using the Arabic noun dcher (literally ‗village‘ in Standard Arabic) such as dcher al-Hattaba (lumbermen). The author listed following Ibn Sahib Al-Salat (1987) twelve passenger stops also corresponding to small villages on the way from Marrakech to Ceuta which are: Tansīft, Dšār al-Ḥatṭāba, Tunīn, Tūqṭīn, Umm Rbīˁ, al-Ǧīssal, Makūl, Wādī Wāsnāt, Wādī Kssās, ˁAyn Ġabūla and Marǧ al-Ḥammām (cf. Sedra, 2009, p. 252). The list which dates back to the twelfth century A.D. contains items

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from Amazigh such as Tunin, Tuqtin, tansift and from Arabic such as Dšār al Hattaba, Marj Al-Hammam and Um Rbiˁ, which are still preserved today. The author argues that it is curious to come across Arabic toponyms such as Dšār al-Ḥatṭāba or Marj al-Hammam in a region known by the dominance of Amazigh toponymy, and postulates that it may rather be attributed to the presence of an Arab population in the region since those times (Sedra, 2009, p. 256)5.

Less important are toponyms from other languages such as French, Spanish, Punic, Phoenician, Latin, Roman, which are the languages of the people who transited through Morocco. Allati (1999, p. 15) provides some examples of such traces, namely, Volubilis, Luxus, Chella, Mazagan, Santa Cruz, Mont Joli and Castelajo.

It follows, then, that toponyms encapsulate the identity of a region. This explains why village names derive from the two mother tongues spoken in the country as well as why these villages bear the names of the people inhabiting them. Skounti (2012, p. 17) argues, in this regards, that there is an old naming tradition in rural Morocco whereby a village is named by the closest neighboring village. The name often refers either to a family or person‘s name or to an outstanding geographical aspect. It should be pointed out, here, that villages, unlike towns or cities, are not named by any administrative or government authority which tend to use official languages, viz. Standard Arabic and French, as in the case of certain cities like Casablanca, El Jadida. El Mountassir (2014, p. 147) points out, in this respect, that urban toponymy is massively in Arabic or Arabised by the central or local administration. Town districts and avenues are assigned official names often in Standard Arabic such as Alfarah, Al Menzah, or Albadr. This alludes to the sociopolitical dichotomy of central vs. peripheral toponymy (see Boujrouf & Hassani, 2008).

1.2 Mother tongues distribution

Amazigh is spoken today along a language continuum stretched from the north to the south of Morocco, and it manifests in three varieties: Tarifit, Tamazight, and Tachelhit. In the north, viz. the Rif mountains and the north east region, people speak Tarifit, a variety of Amazigh, mainly the tribes of Temsamane, Ayt Touzine, Ayt Ouaryaghel and Igznayen, etc. The urban areas in which Tarifit is used are mainly Houceima, Mellila, Nador, Zaio, Aknoul, Tetouan and Tangiers. Tarifit comes into contact

5 Sedra goes even further and states that, ―La présence arabe dans différentes

localités du Maroc médiéval, même au sein des milieux berbères, est attestée

historiquement depuis l‘aube de l‘islamisation du pays‖ (Sedra, 2009, p. 256).

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with the Beduin and Jebli MA in Beni Iznassen in the east, and Senhaja of Srair in the west (Boukous, 2008, p. 72).

Tamazight is the variety spoken in the Middle Atlas and north of High Atlas and to the southeast region until Errachidia and Saghru mountain. This variety is dominant in provinces such as Azrou, Sefrou, Khenifra, El Hajeb, Khemisset, Boulmane, Errachidia Goulmima. Tamazight comes into contact with Beduin MA in the Gherb and Tadla Beni Mellal plains and in Tafilalt region in the southeast (see Boukous, 2008, p. 72).

Tachelhit is used in the Southwest region extending from Essaouira and Sidi Ifni in the west to Demnat in the northeast and Der‘a river in the southeast. Tachelhit is spoken in provinces such as Chtouka Ait Baha, Taroudant, Tiznit, Marrakech El Haouz, Ouarzazate, and to a less extent in Casablanca, Marrakech, Mohammedia, etc. due to population migration.

The contact areas of Tachelhit with MA are located in plain areas of Taroudant, Chichawa, Goulmime, and north of Essaouira (Boukous (2008: 72). Moroccan Arabic dialects are dominant in the areas where Amazigh is not used. There are four main sub dialects of MA: the urban dialect spoken in traditional Andalusian cities such Fes, Rabat, Teouan, etc., the Jebli dialect spoken in Jbala region, the Bedouin dialect (Hilalian or Ma‗qilian) spoken in the Atlantic plains, Moulouya basin and the Eastern plateau, and the Hassani dialect spoken in the Sahara (Youssi, 1989b; Boukous; 2000; among others).

French and Spanish were used during the period of colonization to name certain towns and administrative centers, as is shown in the following chart ph (see Boujrouf & Hassani, 2008, p. 43).

(1) French place names and their Moroccan counterparts

During colonisation After colonisation

Port Lyautey Kenitra

Petit Jean Sidi Kacem

Luis Gentils Yousoufia

Villa Sanjurjo Al Hoceima

Castillojos Kser Seghir

Historical data on the migratory movements of the rural population reveal that the linguistic map of Morocco as we know it today was roughly fixed during the first half of the nineteenth century (Boukous, 2008, p. 73). This is what has been represented in the following language map (Boukous, 2012, p. 17).

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1.3 Toponyms in Morocco

Given the importance of toponyms in identifying geographical entities and in bearing symbolic social and political significance, these names have been studied from the geographical and sociopolitical perspectives (see Boujrouf, & Hassani, 2008; Hilali, 1994; Hart, 1992). It should be noted, however, that despite their importance, the linguistic studies on toponyms are scarce and focus mainly on the semantic content of the names, their categorization, their origin and etymology (El Fasi, 1984; Allati, 1999; Peyron, 2010; Yeou, 2011). Little or no attention has however ever been given to the sociolinguistic dimension of toponyms in Morocco, especially the sociolinguistic significance of their distribution and the potential correlation which would emanate from that. Hart (1960) undertook a statistical study in the North West of Morocco on the Arabic and Amazigh toponymy and anthroponymy, namely place and tribe names used in the MA-speaking region of Jbala and Ghmara. In another study, Hart (1992) attempted to widen the scope of his study by

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looking at tribe and place names generally used in Morocco and Algeria6. The outcome of the two studies has shown that Amazigh place and tribe names enjoy a wide distribution and high frequency of occurrence even in ―regions which today speak Arabic‖ (Hart, 2000, p. 26).

1.4 The meaning of Ait and Oulad

The Ait and Oulad items represent a semantically related pair both meaning ‗sons/offsprings of (a grandfather, first dweller, or owner of the place)‘ ‗belonging to a family, tribe or region‘ or ‗owners of estate; land‘. Literally, Ait is plural form of ‗o‘ or ‗gw‘ as is found in ‗o tamazirt‘ or gw tmazirt‘ ‗the one from homeland‘ as the singular of Ait tmazirt, meaning ‗those from homeland‘. Thus, Ait refers to a relation of belonging or descendance/origin/filiation to a place person/family or institution (Ma‗lamat Al-maghrib, p. 119). According to the Amazigh dictionary by Chafiq (1991), Ait is a synonym of ayddar meaning ‗people from‘ ‗people belonging to‘, so, Ait Ouarzazt and Ait Lahcen refer to the people from Warzazate and to sons of Lahcen respectively (Chafiq, 1991, p. 153).

Historically, certain Amazigh tribes seem to have developed different variants of Ait depending on the geographical location. Thus, in the Rif and Ben iznassen region as well as in the middle Atlas, Ait is pronounced as ‗aith‘/ ‗ashth‘ as in Aïth Waryaghal in El Hoceima and Aïth Seghrouchen ‗Berabers du Moyen Atlas‖ (Laoust, 1920, p. xiv). It should be noted that the aith/aith variation is due to a phonological process, namely, lenition which affects oral stops post vocalically and after some fricatives (Bouhlal, 1994; El Hammari, 1997: 2000; Laaboudi, 2004), which is common to JBMA as well as Amazigh varieties. According to Laoust (1920, p. xiii) aït occurs as a tribe name in the high and anti-atlas and south of Morocco in general (i.e. Aït Immour ‗Chleuh du Haouz de Marrakech‘ and Aït Mzal ‗Chleuh de l‘Anti Atlas‘). Aïth is used as a variant of Ait to refer to tribes in the north and Middle Atlas such as ‗Rifain‘ and Aïth Seghrouchen ‗Berabers du Moyen Atlas‘ (Laoust, 1920, p. xiv).

Oulad in MA is the plural form of oueld meaning ‗son‘ or ‗boy‘. So Oulad or wlad mean ‗children‘ or ‗sons‘ as in, for instance, wlad el 3em ‗cousins‘ (Quitout, 2001, p. 228). Oulad is also transcribed in certain writings as oulād or oulâd with a diacritic on the vowel to mark vowel length as in some tribe names from Doukkala (i.e. Oulâd Bou „Aziz,

6 Toponyms are items that mostly resist language change. Studies have shown that

original and very ancient forms of Moroccan toponyms have been preserved, and

that most of these names are in ancient languages so much so that they are now

linguistically opaque (El Bakri 1965, as cited in El Allati, 1999, p. 15).

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Oulâd „Amran, Oulâd Bouzerrara (Honoré Champion 1932: 75). Therefore, Oulad, like Ait in Amazigh, is typically used to introduce tribe names of Arab origin. Yet, the first Arab tribes which moved to Morocco were referred to as Banu Hilal and Banu Ma‗qil and not Oulad Hilal and Oulad Ma‗qil, which would imply that Oulad is a typical Moroccan filiation term adopted to refer to the Arabic speaking tribes and villages.

In an interesting article on the meaning and use of Ait to introduce anthroponyms in Morocco, Azayko (1991) states this particle is related to Oulad in that it conveys the meaning tarwa ―sons/children‖, which stand as its literal semantic equivalent. It is attested that tarwa can replace Ait in cases like Ait sidi hmad ou moussa (Azaiko, 1991, p. 120). Azaikou also points out, following Al Baidaq (1971), that Ait is often interpreted as and receives as equivalent in Arabic banu ―descendants of‖. He further states that banu, in fact, replaced Ait in many tribe names in the process of the Arabization of the people in the plane areas in Morocco (Azayko, 1991, p. 120).

2. Theoretical Background

2.1 Extensive toponymy

While in other areas of research, the qualitative and quantitative methods are adopted, in toponymy, some researchers, such Tent (2015), propose the intensive and extensive toponymy model to echo the qualitative and quantitative model. For the purpose of this study, we have adopted the extensive theoretical model of toponymy which is based on data mining from maps, atlases and other place name data bases. It also allows for a quantitative analysis of place names frequency of occurrence and geographical distribution (Tent & Slatyer, 2009). The extensive toponymy model is interested in ―revealing place naming practices and patterns; distributions of certain types of toponym, or geographical feature, settlement patterns and so on‖ (Tent, 2013, p. 72).

Given that Ait and Oulad introduce nouns of the particular category of toponyms referring to people‘s names, we adopt Tent and Blair (2009; 2011) taxonomy of toponym types which classifies place names into 7 categories based on the nature of meaning they convey and on their communicative function, as outlined in (3) below:

(3) Toponym classification

a) Descriptive: indicating inherent characteristic of the place name: e.g. Wide Bay, Three Mile Creek.

b) Associative: referring to something which is always associated with the place name or its physical context; e.g. Shark Bay, Telegraph Point.

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c) Occurrence: recording an event, incident, occasion, date or action associated with the place name; e.g. Pentecost Island, Seventeen Seventy, January 11 Plaza.

d) Evaluative: reflecting the emotional reaction of the namer or a strong connotation associated with the place; e.g. Hope Island, Beauty Point.

e) Shift: using a toponym, in whole or part, from another location or remote place; e.g. New Orleans, New England.

f) Indigenous: importing an indigenous toponym or word into another toponym system, e.g. Ulura, Wangaratta.

g) Eponymous: Commemorating or honoring a person or other named entity by using a proper name as a place name; e.g. Adelaide, Tryall Rocks, Maria Island. (Athens) (Tent, 2013, p. 71)

The above classification reveals that toponyms meaning can in fact associate with a variety of referents, such as an important date or event, an outstanding physical feature of the place, or even an expression of an emotional perception or attitude. What is common among these types is that place names often reflect what people perceive as the most important feature of the place, and how they come to know it, and the reaction to their first encounter with it.

The last category, the eponym, applies to the type of toponyms we are investigating in the present study, given that they are people names attributed to places. What is usually referred to as an ―eponym‖ is defined by Crystal (2003, p. 163) as ―the name of a person after whom something (such as an invention or a place) is named‖. It literally means ―upon name‖ from the Greek epi ―upon‖ and onyma ―name‖.

Eponyms according to Cipri (2011) are divided into monoremic and polyremic types. The first type consists of a single word which is associated to a place or wider meaning such as Braille. Polyremic words are made up of more than one word such London Bridge, or Wall Street (Cipri, 2011, p. 255). These place names can still be distinguished on the basis of the relationship holding between the language of the toponym and the region in which it used.

2.2 Endonym vs exonym

There are other theoretically relevant descriptive concepts which can help us account sociolinguistically for certain patterns of the geographical distribution of Ait and Oulad village names. We have adopted the descriptive concepts endonym and exonym from the glossary of geographical names elaborated by UNGEGN (United Nations Experts on

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Geographical Names) to distinguish between place names from a language spoken in the area where the named place is located, and those from a language which is not spoken in the same area of the named place.

The Working Group of the UNGNEN have elaborated a series of definitions of the descriptive terms endonym and exonym since 1957. The discussion is centered mainly on whether endonyms should be in the local official language only and whether to consider toponyms from the minority and local unofficial languages as exonyms. The latest definition elaborated in 2007, occurring in Bartos-Elekes (2008), states that an exonym is a ―name used in a specific language for a geographical feature situated outside the area where that language is spoken‖. It is further stated in the definition that the name is different in its form from the word in the local language used to refer to the same geographical entity (Bartos-Elekes, 2008, p. 60). An endonym is the name of a geographical place ―in an official or well-established language occurring in that area where the [place] is located‖. The recent definition stresses the requirement that the language of endonyms should be ―well-established and used for centuries‖ in the area; and that minority language names should be considered as exonyms (p. 60).

3. Methodology

3.1 Sample

Toponym data are taken from the official website of The Moroccan National Office of Electricity and Drinking Water ONEE, which elaborated a data base of electrified villages throughout the regions of Morocco from 1982 to 2015. The list of villages is organized into 74 provinces; each province is organized into communes which are in turn organized into villages. The 2015 village list contains 38055 villages, which amounts to 99.15 % of the total villages in these provinces7.

The sample consists of 14 provinces that were selected on the basis of their location on the language map in Morocco; and sorted according to the language(s) spoken in these communes as shown in the chart below. The 14 provinces include 17258 villages, which is quite representative for the purpose of this study. In addition, the choice of these provinces is motivated by the fact that they cover large areas of rural territory which generally includes a high number of villages compared to urban provinces which generally contain few or no villages.

The selection of the provinces is also made on the basis of representativeness of the regions where either MA or Amazigh is

7 The data base of the villages from 74 Moroccan provinces is available for public

consultation at http://www.one.org.ma/fr.

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dominant as well as the zones where the two varieties come into contact. The 14 provinces are classified accordingly as listed in the chart below.

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These provinces represent a linguistic continuum over regions where

Amazigh and MA are spoken from the North (Rif Mountains) where

Tarifit is normally spoken, to the Anti-Atlas mountains in the south

where Tashelhit is prevalent. The sample data in (5) illustrates the

distribution of Ait/Oulad toponyms over these three linguistic zones,

namely, Amazigh, M.A. and contact zone.

(5) Sample Ait/Oulad names‘ distribution

Region Ait- Names Oulad- Names

Amazigh

Taroudant

Ait Abdellah, ait Iaaz, ait

Igas, ait Makhlouf Lamine,

Ait Lhit

Oulad Amer; Oulad

Jaafar, Oulad Mellouk,

Oulad Rajeh, Oulad Ali

Moroccan

Arabic

Berrchid

Ait Omar Oulad Bouabid, Oulad

Sidi Aissa, Oulad El

Asri, Oulad Kacem,

Oulad Lahcen

Contact zone

Beni Mellal

Ait Boumellal, Ait

Chebab, Ait Hamza, Ait

Ouabid Allah, Ait

Hammou ou Abdessalam,

Ait Amiar

Oulad Said ou Moussa,

Oulad Yacoub, Oulad

Ain Nass

The data are taken from one province for each region. As will be demonstrated in the findings section, Ait/Oulad village names distribution is contingent on the linguistic zone where they are attested.

For more accuracy of our findings, the toponym data are corroborated by the MA and Amazigh speakers data in the selected provinces. These consist of figures corresponding to speakers of the two mother tongues at home as provided by HCP based on the 2014 National Population

Amazigh MA Contact Area

Houceima Ben Slimane Beni Mellal

Azilal Settat Kelaat Sraghna

El Haouz Berrechid Taounate

Taroudant Safi Essaouira

Chtouka Ait Baha El Jadida

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Census8. We use these statistics as complementary data to find out whether the speakers who reported to speak either MA or one of the Amazigh varieties at home are located in areas in which MA or Amazigh toponyms are dominant or not. By doing so, we attempt to check for correlations between the rate of Ait and Oulad place names and the languages they represent in the 14 provinces.

3.2 Data quantification method

After locating the provinces on the linguistic map, we sorted them on the basis of the household languages as reported by the population in the HCP National Census (2014). To ensure representativeness, we selected the provinces with the largest number of villages/tribes and then quantified the numbers of Ait/Oulad per province and compared them to household language statistics to check for correlations.

4. Data Analysis and Findings

4.1 Distribution of Ait and Oulad in the three linguistic zones

4.1.1 Amazigh zone

The distribution of this pair of names in the Amazigh areas is characterized by a large presence of Ait names and much less occurrences of Oulad names. This is shown in the following chart.

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Province Village Ait-name % Oulad-name %

Azilal 1158 321 28 1 0

Lhawz 1694 385 23 12 1

Taroudant 2463 278 12 15 0,6

Chtouka Ait Baha 1287 310 25 0 0

AlHouceima 732 42 6 13 2

Ait toponyms are prevalent in the five Amazigh provinces with varying degrees. Thus, Azilal tops the list with 28%, followed by Chtouka Ait Baha, where 25% of the Ait tribe names are attested. Lhawz region comes in the third place with 23% followed by Taroudant 12%, while Al Hoceima is in the last position with the lowest rate 6% of Ait village names although it is an Amazigh-speaking zone par excellence. This is largely due to the fact that there are other Amazigh toponyms that start with /a/, /i/ and /ta/ such as Agni, Ibayahyaten, Idghiren, Taghzout, etc.

8 The 2014 National Population Census provides, inter alia, the most recent official

figures on the speakers who use one of the three Amazigh varieties at home, viz.

Tarifit, Tamazight and Tachelhit as well as MA. The figures are available for public

consultation at the HCP website: https://rgph2014.hcp.ma/

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These represent a significant percentage, viz, 8.5%, 13% and 10% respectively9. The divergence in the frequency of occurrence of the two village names in the five provinces is rendered more visible in the following column chart.

(7)

Azilal represents a typical Amazigh region where Ait names are the most recurrent as endonyms, as opposed to Oulad names which are almost non-existent, and which thus display the properties of a rather foreign name, viz. exonym, in the area. In fact, this is almost the case throughout the five Amazigh provinces, where Oulad ranges from non-existent as is the case for Chtouka Ait Baha and Azilal, to a relatively low rate as in Lhawz (1%) and Al Hoceima (2%).

The situation, however, seems to reverse in the provinces located in the Atlantic planes region where MA is dominant as illustrated in (7) and (8) below.

4.1.2 Moroccan Arabic zone

(8)

Province Village Ait-name % Oulad-name %

Berrechid 376 1 0 132 35

Ben Slimane 177 0 0 58 33

El Jadida 851 10 2 174 21

Settat 1110 2 0,1 403 37

Safi 1383 1 0 447 33

9 The region of Essaouira represents the only exception where the occurrence of

Amazigh village names beginning with Id such as Id Addi, Id Bouaggou, and Id

Ouarab scored high, viz. 434.

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The situation in provinces such as Berrechid, Settat, Benslimane, ElJadida, and Safi which are located in MA speaking areas in the linguistic map is the reverse in that the rate of occurrence of Oulad names is quite high and proportionate with the number of the villages in each province; thus, the higher the number of villages, the higher the rate of Oulad topnyms as is the case for Safi and Settat provinces. El Jadida province is an exception in that the frequency of Oulad toponyms is relatively lower, although the number of villages is higher than that in Benslimane.

(9)

This chart shows the low percentage of Ait toponyms in the MA speaking zone, which gives it the status of exonym. In fact, out of the five provinces, it is only attested in El Jadida while it is either absent as the case for Benslimane or insignificant in the other provinces. On the other hand, the percentage of Oulad is quite high especially in Settat (37%), Safi (35%), Benslimane and Berrechid (33%) and quite moderate in El Jadida. The dominance of Oulad confers an endonym status on this toponym. Depending on the frequency of its occurrence, when it is high the toponym is an endonym as in the case of Ait in the Amazigh speaking zone and Oulad in the MA speaking zone. However, when it is low, the toponym is an exonym as for Oulad in the Amazigh and Ait in the Arabic speaking zone. The correlation between the language spoken in a region and the frequency of occurrence of the two toponyms as either endonyms or exonyms is strong. In the following section, focus will be on the frequency of these two toponyms in the contact zone.

4.1.3 Contact zone

This zone includes 6000 villages distributed over four major provinces as detailed in chart (9) below. Beni Mellal and El Kelaa Sraghna are located in an area where Amazigh tribes of the Middle Atlas come into contact with the Arab tribes of the Tadla and Lhawz planes. Taounate is a

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province of contact between tribes speaking Tarifit and locutors of Jebli MA. Moving to the South, Essaouira province covers a large territorial area including villages speaking Tachelhit mainly to south and villages in the north of the city, in the borders with Chiadma where MA is dominant.

(10)

Province Nb.villages Ait-name % Oulad-name %

Beni Mellal 376 97 26 41 11

El Kalaa Sraghna 707 100 15 184 27

Essaouira 3149 820 27 153 5

Taounate 1768 2 (Hait) 0 65 4

Unlike the province of Taounate- where Ait rate is insignificant – (i.e. 2 out of 1768 villages), the frequency of Ait in the three other provinces is proportionate with the number of villages and is quite significant10. Thus, Essaouira province tops the list with 820 Ait villages. Beni Mellal rates second with 97 Ait tribes out of 376 villages. As to El Kalaa Sraghna, it is third in importance with 100 Ait villages.

The frequency of Oulad toponym, on the other hand, is not proportionate with the overall number of villages in each province. Thus, El Kalaa with 707 villages scores the highest in terms of the Oulad tribes as opposed to Essaouira, which has the highest number of villages -3149- but only 153 are Oulad toponyms. Similarly, the provinces of Beni Mellal and Taounate fare low with 41/376 and 65/1768 Oulad occurrences respectively. The findings indicate that the frequency of Ait in the contact zone is higher than that of Oulad topnym in the contact zone as demonstrate in tableau (10) below.

(11)

Contact zone

Total village Nb Ait Nb Oulad Nb

6000 1001 443

The figures in (10) suggest that Oulad behaves as an exonym while Ait is the endonym in the contact zone. Exhibit (11) which graphs the percentages of Ait/Oulad per region supports this finding to a large extent.

10

The two villages located in Taounate beginning with variant ‗hait‟ are hait Ayyad

and hait Laazib.

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(12)

Within the province of Essaouira, which accommodates a large set of the Amazigh tribes of Haha and some Arab tribes of Chyadma11, the rate of Ait is very high 820 and outscores even that of the five Amazigh provinces selected above. Likewise, in Beni Mellal the graph of Ait is higher than that of Oulad, which lends further support to the claim made above, namely, that Ait is an endonym in the contact zone. Conversely, in El Kalaa Sraghna province Ait is outscored by Oulad, while it is non-existent in Taounate. To conclude, the findings of the contact zone show that by and large the rate of Ait villages is higher than that of Oulad, which substantiates the claim that the toponym Ait tends to be more dominant and is thus an endonym in both the Amazigh speaking zones as well as the contact regions.

4.2 Household languages statistics

After demonstrating that Ait is dominant in two of the three zones investigated, this section discusses the findings on the household languages in the selected zones and compares them to those of Ait/Oulad to check for potential correlations.

4.2.1 Amazigh zone

(13 a)

Province MA % Amazigh %

Azilal 53.6 90.7

Alhawz 58.6 86.1

Taroudant 68.2 61.1

Chtouka Ait Baha 56 79

Al Houceima 74.8 68.4

11

Haha and Chyadma are two a large neighboring Amazigh and Arab tribes

respectively inhabiting the coastal area between Safi and the South of Essaouira.

125

(13b)

According to the statistics in (12a) and the bar graph (12b), two out of the five Amazigh provinces, namely, Taroudant and Al Houceima, have MA as a dominant household language. Further, Al Houceima tops the list with its 74.8% of MA as a language spoken at home along with Amazigh, which is interesting given that it is a Tarifit speaking area. Azilal, on the other hand has the highest number of Amazigh speakers at home followed by Al Hawz and Chtouka Ait Baha.

Upon comparing the findings in (6) above and (12) there is a strong correlation between the frequency of Ait/Oulad and the household languages in the Amazigh zone. Thus, Amazigh outscores Moroccan Arabic in the same way that Ait outscores Oulad in this region as already discussed above, which provides further support to endonym status of Ait toponym.

4.2.2 Moroccan Arabic zone

(14a)

Province MA % Amazigh %

Berrechid 99.6 6.2

Ben Slimane 99.6 4.2

El Jadida 99.7 2.5

Settat 99.7 1.9

Safi 99.8 1.4

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(14b)

The mother tongue statistics in (14) show that although all households in the MA speaking zones are bilingual to varying degrees, MA is the dominant household language. This finding correlates with the high rate of Oulad village name in this region as discussed above. It also shows a low rate of Amazigh speakers (6.2% & 1.4%) thus revealing a strong correlation between this limited presence of Amazigh speakers and the dominance of Oulad names. The small number of Amazigh speakers located in this zone is due mainly to recent movement of the Amazigh speaking population to the urban centers of these provinces. Due to climate change and economic factors, villages are generally far less attractive to migration all over the country.

4.2.3 Contact Zone

Two remarks stand out with respect to the household language statistics for the contact zone. Fist, two provinces, namely, Taounate and El Kalaa Sraghna show a weak bilingualism in that most households are predominantly MA speakers. Second, the two other princes, viz. Essaouira and Beni Mellal, conversely reveal a relatively high numbers of MA and Amazigh bilinguals as shown in (14).

(15a)

Province MA % Amazigh%

Beni Mellal 90 38.4

El Kelaa Sraghna 99.7 4.3

Essaouira 75.3 42.7

Taounate 99.9 0.5

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(15b)

We showed above ((9) & (10)) that Essaouira and Beni Mellal have the highest rate of Ait toponyms in the contact zone. In fact, Essaouira alone accounts for 14% of Ait toponyms in the whole contact region. It follows that there is a correlation between the household language and the frequency rate of the corresponding toponym.

5. Discussion

The first major outcome of this study relates to the high rate of occurrence of the linguistically significant pair of Ait and Oulad toponyms compared to other toponyms. This frequency is indeed the result of a productive naming strategy whereby the population in rural Morocco assign names which not only mark their ethnic and linguistic identity but also establish relation of appropriation and demarcation of the named space.

The highest frequency of Ait names occurs in the provinces located in the Milddle Atlas, (Azizlal), the High Atlas (Lhawz), and Anti Atlas (Chtouka Ait Baha), which are historically known as Amazigh speaking regions. Parallely, Oulad names are more common in the Atlantic plains (Settat, Ben Slimane and Safi), where most Arab tribes have settled. It should also be noted that Ait and Oulad names are almost mutually exclusive in these areas, (i.e. there is no Ait name in Berrechid and only 1 Oulad name in Azizlal). The relatively limited presence of Ait names in Al Houceima can be explained by the tendency in the Rif region, unlike the High Atlas and Souss regions, to opt less for the Ait naming strategy. This corroborates the argument by Laoust (1920) and Hart (2000) that Northern Amazigh tribes use the variant Aith attested today as ath in the Beni Iznassen region.

The HCP statistics on the household languages in the selected provinces show a high rate of use of MA especially in the coastal and contact regions (i.e. over 90% and to a quite considerable extent in the Amazigh provinces which are more than 50% of the surveyed population). This situation is rather different for the rate of use of the three Amazigh

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varieties which ranges from 61.1% in Taroudant to 90.7% in Azilal. Yet, these varieties are very poorly present in the MA and contact zones, i.e. 0.4% in Taounate, 1.4% in Benslimane and 1.9% in Settat. This overall situation can be explained by the Arabization process affecting not only the population in the contact areas but also the young generation in the Amazigh speaking regions.

Significant correlations yet emerge when confronting the figures of the frequency of occurrence of each of the two village names with those of the household languages. The provinces which register a high frequency of Ait names viz. Azilal 28%, Chtouka Ait Baha 25%, and Lhawz 23%, also record high rates of use of Amazigh varieties, namely 53% in Azilal, 58% in Lhawz, and 56% in Chtouka Ait Baha. This gives a sound indication that Ait names occur typically in Amazigh speaking regions and that it can stand as a linguistic variable associated with Amazigh speaking locations.

In a parallel fashion, Oulad names stand on the other side as indicators of the dominance of MA in areas where they commonly occur. The provinces of Berrechid, Settat and Safi also scored correlating Oulad names and household languages figures, viz. 35%/99.6, 37%/99/7%, and 33%/99.8% respectively.

Household language statistics reflect a more present-time demographic situation, unlike village names which date back to hundreds of years. The relatively high rate of MA speakers in the provinces such as Taroudant (68.2%), and Chtouka Ait Baha (56%) where Ait names are dominant is a result of Arabization of the Amazigh population. The two languages are not exclusive and most of this population is bilingual. But the presence of Amazigh speaking population in provinces with dominant Oulad names like Berrechid, 6.2% is not attributed to bilingualism but rather to population mobility due to socio-economic factors.

6. Conclusion

In this study, we have elaborated a review of Ait and Oulad toponyms in Morocco, surveyed studies on their meaning and development. We have also presented two types of complementary and highly accurate data. We made use of a theoretical quantitative framework of extensive toponymy and linguistically significant classification of toponyms into endonyms and exonyms. We presented figures, compared HCP data of MA and Amazigh speakers‘ data and demonstrated that there is a strong correlation between the two.

This study has attempted to explore the under-researched area of the intersection between linguistics and geography in Morocco. The geographical distribution of a highly significant linguistic item such as

129

village names in Morocco can shed significant light on the yet grey area of language isoglosses. We have demonstrate that the Ait and Oulad pair represents interesting linguistic variables which can help track the presence of MA and Amazigh varieties throughout the Moroccan territory, and thus contribute to the elaboration of the language map of Morocco.

The main contribution of the study lies in the quantification of the frequency of occurrence of the two typically MA and Amazigh toponyms in the selected provinces based on accurate data which listed 99,5% of the villages in these surveyed provinces. This quantitative study allowed us to show that Ait and Oulad names are highly recurrent. This frequency can exceed 600 villages each of them in a single province as the case of Ait in Azizal or Essaouira and its counterpart Oulad in Safi and Settat. We have also demonstrated that the official statistics related to the MA and Amazigh speakers lend support to the tendency that (i) provinces with a high rate of Ait and Oulad names also accommodate high numbers of Amazigh and MA speakers respectively and that (ii) regions with a high rate of MA village names are basically inhabited by MA monolingual speakers while those with a high rate of Amazigh toponyms tend to be Amazigh and relatively bilingual regions.

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