Here’s a quote from Aaron Sorkin’s script from The West Wing pilot episode. LEO McGARRY (the White House Chief of Staff) complains to his wife in the opening montage that “seventeen across is wrong”. Later, he talks to his secretary, MARGARET:
LEO: Margaret. Please call the editor of the New York Times crossword and tell him that Khaddafi is spelled with an h, and two d’s, and isn’t a seven letter word for anything.
MARGARET: Is this for real? Or is this just funny?
LEO: Apparently, it’s neither.
Later still, Leo phones the New York Times himself. During his telephone conversation, he is joined by C.J. CREGG, the press secretary.
LEO: [on phone] Seventeen across. Yes. Seventeen across is wrong. You’re spelling his name wrong. What’s my name? My name doesn’t matter. I’m just an ordinary citizen who relies on the Times crossword for stimulation. And I’m telling you, that I’ve met the man twice, and I’ve recommended a preemptive Exocet Missile strike against his airforce. So, I think I know how to…
C.J.: [in shock] Leo!
LEO: [looking at the phone, then hanging up] They hang up on me. Every time.
C.J.: That’s almost hard to believe.
How do you like my use of popular culture to solve this riddle?!
Gaddafi seems to be the standard here.
Some newspapers have a ‘house style’ of spelling these things to stop irritating the reader with inconsistancy. Although you can find ‘Taliban’ and ‘Taleban’ in the London Guardian (notorious at one time for its misprints)
Filling it out with vowels and everything: Qadhdhafi Mu`ammar
The standard Arabic way to phrase it is Mu`ammar al-Qadhdhafi
I know Cecil derided this spelling, even though it’s the most accurate transliteration of the written Arabic. English speakers are put off by the combination “dh” for some reason I never understood. Look how often Gandhi is misspelled “Ghandi.” The sound of the Arabic letter ذ represented in transliteration is the same as the sound represened by <th> in “breathe,” “this,” “that,” “the other.” It’s the voiced interdental.
When French speakers learning English complain about “ze 'orrible th sound,” I ask them “Which th sound? There are two different sounds spelled by <th>. Unvoiced as in breath, or voiced as in breathe?” In English, we make <th> do double duty, for two different sounds, while <dh> goes unused.
Anyway, since English has never used “dh” to spell the voiced interdental, even though it would be more logical, there’s resistance to using it to transliterate Arabic. But what else could you use? When the digraph <th> is used in Arabic transliteration, the presumption is that it represents the unvoiced interdental. Like the Al Thani family of Bahrain.
During an early-80s episode of SNL, Tim Kasarinsky did a “Weekend Update” on this subject and the various spellings of the name scrolled behind him. After several close variations, for the sake of humor any words beginning with “K” and “Q” scrolled up.
