Wait, When Did That Happen?

I recently fell down an internet rabbit hole because of an influencer.

Specifically, I follow That Midwestern Mom on social media, and she recently posted about a trip to what a lot of us grew up calling "the Middle East." Except she didn't call it that. She called it SWANA — South West Asia North Africa. I stared at my phone for a solid ten seconds, blinked, and thought, wait, when did that happen?

So naturally, I did what any reasonably curious person does at 9 pm: I went and read about it for way longer than I meant to. And it got me thinking about how much of what we call things is less about the thing itself and more about who's doing the naming, and when.

Here's the fun part: "Middle East" isn't some ancient, neutral geographic term that's just been sitting around since the dawn of time. It's a relatively modern label, and it's really a geopolitical term more than a geographic one — coined from a very specific vantage point, and shaped by very specific strategic interests. "Middle East" means "the East that is in the middle," but the middle of what, exactly? The middle relative to London and Paris, sure — but the term picked up steam through European and later American military and diplomatic planning, as a way of carving the map into zones of interest. It's a term built around who was doing the strategizing, not around the people who actually live there.

SWANA flips that. Instead of describing the region by its distance from Europe or its usefulness on someone else's map, it describes it by what it actually is: a region spanning South West Asia and North Africa. No implied center of the universe, no leftover Cold War strategy memo baked into the name. It's the linguistic equivalent of finally asking someone to spell their own name instead of guessing.

Is SWANA the be-all-end-all correct term forever and ever, amen? Almost certainly not — language doesn't work that way. But it's a good example of a word doing something words do constantly: getting quietly retired because someone realized it was built on an assumption — or an agenda — nobody who lived there actually agreed to.

Here's the part I find genuinely fascinating: it's not just the label that changes. Once you swap "Middle East" for "SWANA" in your head, the mental picture changes with it. "Middle East" comes pre-loaded with decades of geopolitical baggage — headlines about conflict, oil, foreign policy briefings, the whole framing of a region defined by its relationship to Western interests. "SWANA" doesn't carry that same cargo. It nudges you toward thinking of the region on its own terms — as a place with its own internal geography, cultures, and histories, rather than as a strategic chess board.

That's the sneaky power of a word shift. It's never just semantics. Change the label and you quietly change what a person notices, assumes, and asks about next. A geopolitical term trains you to see conflict and strategy first. A geographic, self-descriptive term trains you to see place and people first. Same land. Completely different lens handed to you before you even open your eyes.

I've written before about the language shifts around intellectual disabilities — words that were once clinical terms in medical textbooks and are now understood to be flat-out pejorative. Words we don't use anymore, for good reason, because they went from diagnosis to insult on a playground somewhere. Same pattern as SWANA, just closer to home: the old term got built by people describing others from the outside, and the correction came from listening to the people, and the families, actually living it.

I've also written about calling Trans folks by their own names — the name and pronouns someone gives you, used consistently, without an explanation demanded first. Same trick again. You let the person define the frame instead of importing one from outside and expecting them to live inside it.

Here's the thread running through all of it, regions and disabilities and names alike: words shift, and that's not a scandal, it's just how language stays honest. You will get it wrong sometimes — we all do. That's fine. What matters is the direction you correct in: toward being led by the people or the communities the words are actually about, not toward defending the word you're more comfortable with.

Here's where I'll rat myself out a little. Over the course of my career, I've changed how I refer to things more times than I can count — not because I was wrong on purpose, but because language is a moving target and doing this work in front of people means you evolve in public. Phrases I used without a second thought early on are phrases I'd gently correct someone else on now. That's not hypocrisy. That's just what it looks like to keep listening.

I think we sometimes treat "I used to say it differently" as a confession of guilt, when really it's just a receipt. It proves you were paying attention the whole time.

So what do we do with all this?

Honestly? Relax a little, and also pay attention. Those two things aren't in tension.

Language changing isn't a test you can fail once and be done with — it's more like weather. You don't get mad at the sky for changing; you just check the forecast before you leave the house. Ask, listen, adjust, and don't beat yourself up over yesterday's vocabulary. The fact that you're even asking "wait, is SWANA the term now?" instead of shrugging it off means you're doing the actual work language shifts are asking of us: paying attention to people over habit.

That Midwestern Mom just wanted to post some videos. Instead, she accidentally sent me on a linguistic scavenger hunt and gave me a sermon illustration for free. I'm certain I'll use that in the near future, if I haven't already by the time this blog post is out.

Keep shifting that language!