As part of an ambitious project by Kurdish authorities, hundreds of towns and villages in northern Syria are shedding Arabised names adopted in the 1960s in favour of their traditional Kurdish ones.

Hasakeh, Syria — On a dusty road in northeast Syria, a woman and her four children stand beside a freshly erected green sign for Joldara, the Kurdish name of her village known for decades as Shajra.

As Turkey’s first president, Ataturk saw the Kurds as a threat to his secular, modernizing revolution. His government forced thousands of them from their homes, closed Kurdish newspapers, banned ...

According to the statistics released by Interior Ministry upon our application, 16,585 people used the name Zîlan - a Kurdish name. Other commonly used Kurdish names included Berîtan (7,822), Mazlûm ...