Names Are Never Only Names: A Nominal Analysis of Terrorist Organizations

Abstract This study argues that terrorism is a political communication process that starts with the connotations made by the keywords terrorist organizations purposefully use in their names to appeal to their first-order audience and show themselves as the vanguards of the values represented by those words. Data analyses conducted based on the names of 2,939 terrorist organizations revealed that terrorist groups name their organizations following similar patterns. Moreover, the study found local and temporal patterns in line with the political trends of the respective era.