

Using Google Ngrams to figure out Gaddafi's correct spelling. - alphakappa
http://www.ecogito.net/anil/2011/02/how-do-you-spell-gaddafis-name/

======
rflrob
Part of the problem is that his last name contains a couple problematic
letters for transliteration.

ق (Qof) is often transliterated as Q, but it's pronunciation varies widely in
the Arabic speaking world. In Egypt, depending on the context, it's either a K
sound or a glottal stop, and in Gulf Arabic, it's similar to the English hard
J sound. In Libyan it's often closer to a G (thus the G in Gaddafi).

ذ (Dhal) is the voiced dental fricative: like the TH sound in 'the',
'weather', or 'loathe' (but not thin, with, or within). Arabic also has an
unvoiced version of the same consonant (ث), so ذ is sometimes transliterated
as dh (d is the voiced version of t).

~~~
gst
In addition, the transliteration also depends on the target language. E.g., in
English Qaddafi seems to be the more common form, while in German almost
always Gaddafi ist used:

866,000 Google hits for: '"gaddafi" site:de'

9,090 Google hits for: '"qaddafi" site:de' (and nearly all of them are English
articles)

------
dandelany
Clever, but the real correct spelling of his name is:

معمر القذافي‎

"Qaddafi" is only "correct" in the sense that it is the most common Latin
alphabet spelling...

~~~
derefr
A "correct" use of language, after you get past all the prescriptivists,
basically means whatever is most effective and efficient at triggering the
right neuronal firings in the most people's minds. For instance, more people
will understand "their dogs" than "there dogs" (people who speak English as a
non-native tongue are unlikely to understand the latter at all)—and the ones
who understand both will understand the former more quickly.

------
joshes
[http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0223/12242906...](http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0223/1224290629972.html)

According to the Irish times, there are a total of _112_ different English
spellings of the name. Transliteration from Arabic to English is always
tricky, it seems.

------
kahirsch
How to recognized the leader of Libya:

    
    
        $name =~ m/M[ou]'?amm?ar ([aAEe]l[- ])?(Q|[GK]h?)a(d|dd|dh|dhdh|th|zz)afi/

------
swombat
I posted this a little while ago...
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2253472> :-)

