# Why Saddam rather than Hussein

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-saddam-rather-than-hussein/302012>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 2, 2005, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-saddam-rather-than-hussein/302012 "2005-05-02T02:41:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2005, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-saddam-rather-than-hussein/302012/21 "2005-05-03T14:03:52Z")

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if the children are done bickering. 😉

Saddam ha a locator of al-Tikirit attached to his name on the end. This means he came from Tikrit. He doesn’t use it - no one in government did - because they preffered to keep the fact that many of the Baathists were from Tikrit out of the public’s vision as much as possible.

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**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2005, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-saddam-rather-than-hussein/302012/22 "2005-05-03T14:27:54Z")

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Maybe it’s because they’re not sure how to spell his last name?

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**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2005, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-saddam-rather-than-hussein/302012/23 "2005-05-03T15:12:40Z")

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> [@Bambi Hassenpfeffer](#):
>
> She has. If you knew better, you’d know that “Husayn” is the preferred transliteration of his name in educated circles

Maybe “in current linguistics circles,” but “educated” circles is a bit much. It appears we’re talking about the letter ې (hope that shows up) which can and has been transliterated any number of ways into English. But “Hussein” is just the common/popular way. The English language press in the Gulf certainly prints “Hussein” for both the Iraqi and (did for) the Jordanian, and the handful of Husseins I met spelled their name that way in English as well.

Incidentally, you do run into a number of family names in the Gulf which are independent of the series-of-patronymic-first-names system. Given the political and social structures of these places that makes a lot of sense. In North Africa you may run into a lot of people who speak Arabic of other descent (Berber for example) who likewise have family names.

Never did meet a “Saddam.”

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