I think that it’s the only place where I see the name spelled “Usama”.
Because that is how it is pronounced. It is more like Usama BenLaden which I believe means Usama son of Laden. If he were Scottish it would be Usama Mcladen. The question is why do the others write it Osama.
Varying languages, dialects, etc, have sounds that are not easy to pin down. The vowel at the beginning of that name is somewhere between an American “o” and an American “u”, not to mention the idea that those two vowels are not very specific either.
So different organizations will choose one spelling or another.
I remember when Libya was in the news some news people called their leader Gadahfi, some Quadafi and other Kadahfi. (spellings are probably a little off) I think for Arabic names there are multiple ways to translate.
Anyone think maybe it’s because Arabic (and related languages) comes complete with its own alphabet that has no relation to the Roman letters that we use in English? There is no “correct” spelling of his name in Roman letters. It’s like trying to spell “Jones” in an Arabic language.
Cecil basically covers this point in this column where he explains why we can’t get a grip on how to spell Qaddafy’s name.
Long story short, Kilt-wearin’ man’s correct; many Arabic letters correspond to a sound that is not directly correlated to the sounds we associate with Roman letters. Therefore, our attempts to spell Arabic names with Roman letters enters into really vague ground- what sounds like a long O to one may be a short U to another.
BTW, this process (of transferring a word or name from one alphabet to another) is called “transliteration.”
–Cliffy
Also there is no single spoken “Arabic” language, but many dialects. I suppose what you usually see in print is based on standard Arabic, but people in different areas have their own dialects.
There are different transliteration convention from country to country too. In North African countries such as Morocco, Algeria, or Tunisia, French influence makes Osama’s name “Oussama”.
Correct. This phenomenon is not limited to Arabic, either. Who we call “Khruschev” in German is “Chruschtschow”. The most notorious the man whose name in Spanish is Chéjov, in French Tchékhof, in German Tschechow, in English Chekhov. The only real way to spell his name is using the Cyrillic alphabet (4EXOB is the best approximation I can do with the Roman alphabet)
You say tomata, I say tomahta, is that it?
Actually, according to Brit Hume on FOX, the correct explanation is that they follow the lead of the U.S. State Department in spelling it Usama. Neat and simple.
A side note: when Bin Laden writes his name in English, he uses a “U”.
I saw this at the bottom of a document shown in The Times this weekend (UK). I’m having trouble finding an on-line picture of this - the document was one sent by him to a London cell just before the embassy bombings.
If I find a cite, I’ll post it. If not, then perhaps one of the “remote-viewers” trotting around might care to look into my mind at, say, 8 o’clock this evening, when I will fish the paper out of my bin and look at the photo closely.
This has been covered before, and the question seems to have been fully answered above. But for completeness I’d like to point to an earlier thread.
Here I provided a list of spellings for the guy:
The situation isn’t as bad as for Qhuadaffi though.