# What ever happened to "Moslem?" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 19, 2016, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354 "2016-07-19T20:38:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Doyle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doyle/32/439_2.png) [@Doyle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doyle)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2016, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/1 "2016-07-19T20:38:51Z")
When I was a kid and first started learning about other religions, followers of Islam were referred to as Moslems. Now, they are Muslims. When did this word disappear? Spellcheck in this post doesn’t even recognize it. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2016, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/2 "2016-07-19T20:46:13Z")
Transliterated words evolve. We could go back to “Musselmen.” ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2016, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/3 "2016-07-19T20:50:08Z")
[Apparently an updating in translating techniques has taken place since you were taught the word “Moslem”.](http://mohammedamin.com/Community_issues/Koran-or-Quran.html) ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2016, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/4 "2016-07-19T21:34:31Z")
When I was a kid, the capital of China was Peiping, Bombay was the largest city in India and Dacca was in East Pakistan (when there was an East Pakistan.) Also, see Cecil’s dissertation on [that dude from Libya.](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/513/how-are-you-supposed-to-spell-muammar-gaddafi-khadafy-qadhafi) ---
**Author:** ![NeonMadman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/58f4c7/32.png) [@NeonMadman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NeonMadman)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2016, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/5 "2016-07-19T22:00:51Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > We could go back to “Musselmen.” I thought those were the guys at the gym. ---
**Author:** ![Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maggie_the_Ocelot)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2016, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/6 "2016-07-19T22:16:18Z")
> [@NeonMadman](#): > > I thought those were the guys at the gym. No, they’re fellows who’ve been under the pier long enough that shellfish have grown on them. ---
**Author:** ![DerekMichaels00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f14d63/32.png) [@DerekMichaels00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DerekMichaels00)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2016, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/7 "2016-07-19T22:43:06Z")
Moslem would appear to be a Farsi transliteration, Muslim from Arabic. Similar as Mohammed vs. Muhammad. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2016, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/8 "2016-07-19T23:53:59Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Transliterated words evolve. > > We could go back to “Musselmen.” Or Mohammadens. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/9 "2016-07-20T00:03:30Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Or Mohammadens. Or, even better, Mahometans! ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/10 "2016-07-20T00:49:33Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Transliterated words evolve. > > We could go back to “Musselmen.” > [@NeonMadman](#): > > I thought those were the guys at the gym. > [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](#): > > No, they’re fellows who’ve been under the pier long enough that shellfish have grown on them. It’s a shame to throw a spanner in this–mentioning “Auschwitz” has a way of bringing down banter–but according to survivors, people in the camp who had been entirely vanquished spiritually, trudging dead-eyed too tired to wait to die, were called called Muselmen. Entry at [about.com](http://about.com): [The Holocaust](http://history1900s.about.com/od/holocaust/fl/Muselmann-in-Nazi-Concentration-Camps.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/11 "2016-07-20T00:54:37Z")
According to this the change was specifically because Moslem, as often pronounced in English sounds more like a different Arabic word meaning evil or unjust. Anyway the general idea is that Muslim tends to be pronounced more closely to the actual sound of the word. I don’t know to what extent transliteration is standardized for Arabic\>English. Examples where given by others like for Chinese (although ‘Peiping’ was a different name for the same city, ‘Peking’; ‘Beijing’ is the same word transliterated differently). In Chinese there’s a different transliteration now for basically every word compared to the systems used in the pre-PRC period. > **[Why Do People Say Muslim Now Instead of Moslem? | History News Network](http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/524)** > > \Is it \Muslim\ or \Moslem\?\\When Baby Boomers were children it was \Moslem\. The \American Heritage Dictionary\ (1992) noted,"\Moslem\ is the form predominantly preferred in journalism and popular usage.... ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/12 "2016-07-20T01:05:07Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > Or, even better, Mahometans! Well, as long as we don’t go back to calling them Saracens. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/13 "2016-07-20T01:17:06Z")
The reason some transliterations weren’t very close, like “Bombay” for a word actually pronounced “Mumbai,” or “Peking” for “Beijing,” had to do with early anthropologists and linguists going places with typesets designed for English. Sound frequency was different in different languages, so substitutions were made. There’d be tables at the beginning of books and pamphlets, but people ignored them and just sounded out words. Pago Pago is an example. The language had a phoneme “nyg,” like the middle “n” in “manana,” (Spanish for “tomorrow”) plus a glottal stop. It did not have a “g” sound just like the “g” in English, so there was no need for the letter g, and they needed a letter for this sound that does not exist in English. The place is actually called something like “Pango Pango,” with the n being that “ny” sound. But most people in the English speaking world call it Pago Pago, phonetically. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/14 "2016-07-20T02:17:34Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > The reason some transliterations weren’t very close, “Peking” for “Beijing,” The other thing in Chinese though was transliterations were originally intended to mimic pronunciation which differed in parts of China and/or have changed since. ‘Peking’ depending how you pronounce the ‘e’ might be closer to the actual in the dialect heard by French missionaries at the time than ‘Beijing’. The latter and all Pinyin transliterations are suppose to mimic pronunciations in the modern Beijing (Mandarin) dialect. Previous common transliterations of some southern Chinese place names still resemble local pronunciations more than Pinyin transliterations do. ---
**Author:** ![Vicsage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e68b1a/32.png) [@Vicsage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vicsage)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/15 "2016-07-20T02:46:01Z")
Is it still called Peking Duck or has that changed too? ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/16 "2016-07-20T04:10:01Z")
> [@Vicsage](#): > > Is it still called Peking Duck or has that changed too? Of course it’s still Peking Duck. General Tso is [Zuo Zongtang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuo_Zongtang) now, but it’s still General Tso’s Chicken. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/17 "2016-07-20T04:18:42Z")
> [@Vicsage](#): > > Is it still called Peking Duck or has that changed too? It’s still called Peking Duck on menus. And there’s still Bombay Gin and Madras cloth and Chicken Kiev. ---
**Author:** ![JohnClay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c37758/32.png) [@JohnClay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnClay)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/18 "2016-07-20T04:48:37Z")
There’s also Phuket which I think is pronounced “pookette” but the ph is normally always an “f” sound so it seems it would be pronounced “fuket” ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/19 "2016-07-20T07:53:11Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > Pago Pago is an example. The language had a phoneme “nyg,” like the middle “n” in “manana,” (Spanish for “tomorrow”) plus a glottal stop. It did not have a “g” sound just like the “g” in English, so there was no need for the letter g, and they needed a letter for this sound that does not exist in English. The place is actually called something like “Pango Pango,” with the n being that “ny” sound. But most people in the English speaking world call it Pago Pago, phonetically. … adds Pago Pago to her list of “places whose names are said wrong in Spanish because we’re using transliterations from another language”… :smack: Which is another source of different spellings: some of the old transliterations English used were originally from Spanish, Portuguese or French. Assuming the above is correct, a Hispanic would have transliterated “Pago Pago” as Paño Paño; a Francophone as Pagno Pagno; a Catalan as Panyo Panyo. The original pronunciation is the same, but each of those people would have been working with a different set of transliteration tools. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354/20 "2016-07-20T10:29:52Z")
English often uses its own words for foreign capitals and countries - Munich for Munchen, Florence for Firenze - just as other languages do - Londres for London, etc. Why English-speakers should accede to pressure by some countries to change the traditional name I do not know, it’s our damned language. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-moslem/760354.md?page=2)