When he returned to Syria recently for the first time in 12 years, Kazem Togan asked the passport control agent to check whether he “had a name” — meaning that he was among the millions of citizens named on wanted lists under the ousted Assad dictatorship.

“You’re wanted by branch 235,” the man told him, smiling as he delivered the news. “The intelligence branch.”

Mr. Togan, a journalist who worked for opposition Syrian media when the old government was in power, said he was thrilled.

“Today, every Syrian asks as a matter of routine, ‘Was I wanted?’” he said. “Anyone who was detained by the Assad regime or wanted by the Assad regime, there is a measure of pride.”

For more than five decades, the dictator Bashar al-Assad and his father before him ruled Syria by terror. Anyone wanted by any of the regime’s numerous intelligence, military or security branches was named on lists that could be checked at airports, border crossings or police stations and risked disappearing into the prison system.

This was known in Syria as “having a name.”

Those who spent their entire lives terrified by the prospect of having a security file are now openly asking officials about their status under the former government and bragging about it openly in conversation or on social media. To have been wanted by a government that tortured or killed millions of its own citizens to hold on to power is a badge of honor — proof that you stood up against oppression.