Why #Beland

One day we saw a Palestinian grandmother say she was going to tie herself to her olive trees. Faced with an army claiming her land, she chose to stay there, rooted, with her trees. What word encompasses such unconditional love for a place?

We realized that there is no term—in Spanish or in English—that allows us to speak of this feeling without invoking nations or flags. So, we coined beland.

Beland is not a randomly created word; it comes from an etymology.

The structure of words tells a story. In English, the prefix be derives from the Germanic word by, which means “in all directions, in all ways, in or through all its parts.”

For example, to emphasize that something or someone is very dear to us, we add the prefix be + the verb to love (beloved). As if the very construction of the word is trying to tell us that true love is felt “in all directions, in all ways, in or through all the parts” of ourselves.

In the case of beland (prefix be + the noun land), the word aims to tell us that we all have a land we feel as part of who we are —a land that lives “in and through” every part of ourselves.