I have seen it Usama on the FBI Most Wanted website, and Osama anywhere else. So I’m guessing they are both right, but what is the difference, and why is there a difference?
Isn’t one a pyramid sceme?
WAG, but I think there’s no proper way of spelling it, because it’s an Arabic name, and thus, is usually written in Arabic script. Thus, in English, it’s just spelled out phonetically, meaning that both spellings are probably closest to right, it’s just somewhere in the middle.
See also:
Muammar Qaddafi
Mo’ammar Gadhafi
Muammar Kaddafi
Muammar Qadhafi
Moammar El Kadhafi
Muammar Gadafi
etc. etc.
His name is Arabic, and their alphabet is different than ours. When we spell an Arabic name in English, we listen to what it sounds like and then try to use English letters that render the same general sounds. (Also true of Chinese, etc.) This is called transliteration. There is no standard code for transliterating Arabic to English, although there are prevalent conventions.
Some Arabic sounds are very gutteral and cannot be rendered in English letters, so there are certain letter combinations that act as a token. For instance, the Islamic holy book has been spelled most often as Koran, but the Arabic letter it begins with is a distinct letter from the Arabic letter that sounds like a K. It is very similar to a K but pronounced farther back in the throat (closest thing in English is the C in calm). So it is also spelled as Quran, the Q signifying this back-throat K sound. KH is used for a K sound with a scraping (like how a German pronounces Bach). And so on.
Years ago on Saturday Night Live there was a joke on the news media called “How Do You Spell Khaddafi?” because everywhere you look, the last name of Moammar Khaddafi of Libya was spelled differently.
Uncle Cece on spelling that Libyan colonel’s name. Did you know there are 32 ways to spell "Muammar (insert your preferred spelling of “ka-doph-ee” here)?
You say Qaddafi, I say Gadhafi
Blah blah blah blah…
Let’s call the whole thing off!!!
You say Epistles, and I say Apostles
You say Elijah, and I say Elisha
Epistles, Apostles, Elijah, Elisha
Let’s call the whole thing off!!!
IMHO, we in the USA spell the guy’s name “Osama” because we instinctually don’t like the idea of our #1 Most Wanted Bad Guy having a name that begins with “USA”.
The transliteration also depends on the target language. The name of the terrorist who is currently on all front pages is spelled like this in different languages:
French: Oussama Ben Laden
Swedish and Spanish: Usama bin Laden
Dutch, German, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Portugese and English: Osama bin Laden
At least that’s the first hits coming up with google in the respective languages.
Like he deserves to have his name spelt correctly.
Asshola Bin Liner. That should be the official spelling.