This article has appeared in the blog "History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences", which is devoted to exploring and promoting the great diversity that exists in the study of language, in the past and today. In modern linguistic terms, we can say that Aramaic is a linguistic group, composed by dialectal varieties defined on a geographical, chronological and socio-cultural basis. However, Aramaic has accumulated through the centuries and the millennia a number of socio-linguistic (cultural, ethnical, religious) connotations, becoming the identity mark, and almost the flag of a number of different social groups, and it still plays a strong role in contemporary identity issues. This article deals with how this linguistic alterity was perceived by Syriac authors and more particularly by Syriac grammarians, and with how the categories of Aramaic, Syriac and Chaldaic were used through the centuries to describe the linguistic and cultural puzzle of medieval Syro-Mesopotamia.