What's in a Name

This week in the headlines an issue surrounding the different names being used to describe ISIS, ISIL, Daesh or the Islamic State. Noting that most of the time the terms Islamic State or ISIS/ISIL are accompanying the caveat of “self–declared” or “self-described”. With the recent the tragedy in Paris, the use of the term Daesh by the French president Francois Hollande caught the medias attention and the debate regarding how we label this group has gained momentum.  Secretary of State, John Kerry, has been calling the group Daesh for a year now, while the US media and President Obama still continue to call it ISIS or ISIL or the worst of all, the Islamic State. Should we be giving these groups the idea of assumed statehood?  I do not believe so, not when you think about the power behind a name.  Alice Guthrie made an excellent statement during her interview with PRI’s Nina Porzucki; she said,  “The victim should choose the name, not the criminal”. I could not agree more with her opinion and I do think that we should refer to the group as something other than a state. If the term Daesh is offensive, believed to sound similar to other negative Arabic words and the terrorist group despises being called Daesh, why are we not doing so? We should not give them the accreditation they are looking for and even if the “play on words” is a petty, passive aggressive, psychological demeaning of their name, it may take on a bigger connotation abroad. We definitely should not play into their egos and if using terms that refer to statehood like rights, then we should discontinue them immediately. How about Daeshbag?! I have a feeling they won't appreciate this name either.