Gaddafi or Qaddafi? Welcome to the transliteration party, friends.

Changing letters or words from one alphabet into the corresponding letters or words from another alphabet is called transliteration. Rendering a language from another alphabet (or from a pictographic system such as Chinese) into the Latin alphabet is called Romanization.

…The difficulty in Romanizing Arabic was illustrated in the 1980s by the multiple spellings for Libyan strongman Moammar/Muammar Gadaffi/Gaddafi/Gathafi/Kadafi/Kaddafi/Khadafy/Qadhafi/Qathafi/etc. The official Library of Congress transliteration would be “Qadhdhafi,” but the library opted for “Quaddafi” instead, because the “dhdh” looked so strange in English. In 1986, most publications, including the AP, adopted “Gadhafi” as the new standard. Why? The Libyan leader had sent letters to American schoolchildren and a minister. The typed name over his Arabic signature: Moammar El-Gadhafi. (Before that, he had refused to Romanize his name.) The AP stylebook says, “people are entitled to be known however they want to be known as long as their identities are clear.”

From the very helpful 2001 Slate article, How Do You Spell “Osama”?

Notes

  1. zladkohasaboaraffe reblogged this from iamgreaterthanhate
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  3. iamgreaterthanhate reblogged this from minnpost and added:
    Thank you - this answers several questions I’ve had.
  4. yomigirl reblogged this from minnpost
  5. i-thaphithin said: Qaddafi himself said he doesn’t give a shit about how it’s spelled with the Latin alphabet, as long as it’s spelled correctly in Arabic.
  6. theautumnal reblogged this from minnpost
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  10. mental12 reblogged this from minnpost and added:
    I found this kind of interesting
  11. shortformblog reblogged this from minnpost and added:
    We hear that guy has a funny name or something.
  12. benedictators reblogged this from hangedfromstars
  13. This was featured in #News
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  15. This was featured in #Libya
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