Muammar Gaddafi - Transcription of His Arabic Name

Transcription of His Arabic Name

Because of the lack of standardization of transcribing written and regionally pronounced Arabic, Gaddafi's name has been romanized in many different ways. Even though the Arabic spelling of a word does not change, the pronunciation may vary in different varieties of Arabic, which may suggest a different romanization. In Literary Arabic, the name مُعَمَّر القَذَّافِي can be pronounced /muˈʕammaru lqaðˈðaːfiː/. Geminated consonants can be simplified. In Libyan Arabic, /q/ (ق) is replaced with ; and /ð/ (ذ), as "th" in "this", is replaced with . Vowel often alternates with in pronunciation in other regions. Thus, /muˈʕammar alqaðˈðaːfiː/ is normally pronounced in Libyan Arabic . The definite article al- (ال) is often omitted.

In August 2011, following the capture of Gaddafi's compound in Tripoli in the later stages of the Libyan civil war, Gaddafi's diplomatic passport was discovered. The Latin transcription of his surname on the passport read "Al-Gathafi". This spelling corresponds to the title of the homepage of algathafi.org, which reads "Welcome to the official site of Muammar Al Gathafi".

"Muammar Gaddafi" is the spelling used by Time, Newsweek, Reuters, BBC News, the majority of the British press, the English service of Al Jazeera, and the English Wikipedia. The Associated Press, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, PBS, and the majority of the Canadian press use "Moammar Gadhafi". The Library of Congress uses "Qaddafi, Muammar" as the primary name. The Edinburgh Middle East Report uses "Mu'ammar Qaddafi" and the U.S. Department of State uses "Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi", although the White House chooses to use "Muammar el-Qaddafi". The Xinhua News Agency uses "Muammar Khaddafi" in its English reports. The New York Times uses "Muammar el-Qaddafi". The Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times of the Tribune Company, and Agence France-Presse use "Moammar Kadafi".

In 1986, Gaddafi reportedly responded to a Minnesota school's letter in English using the spelling "Moammar El-Gadhafi". Until that point, his name had been pronounced with an initial 'k' in English.

A 2007 interview with Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi confirms that he uses the spelling "Qadhafi", and Muhammad Gaddafi's official passport uses the spelling "Al-Gathafi".

An article published in the London Evening Standard in 2004 lists a total of 37 spellings of his name, while a 1986 column by The Straight Dope quotes a list of 32 spellings known from the Library of Congress. ABC and MSNBC identified 112 possible spellings. This extensive confusion of naming was used as the subject of a segment of Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update on 12 December 1981. In short, the alternative spellings for each part of his name are shown in brackets:

Not all are possible, as some alternatives are most probably combined with others, or even impossible with others (for example, simplification of geminated /mm/ usually implies simplification of /aː/).

The Arabic verb قَذَفَ qaðafa has various meanings centering on "he threw".