Remember Muammar/Moammar Qaddafi/Gaddafi/Khadafi?

Same guy. Multiple ways of spelling his name in various major media. And he was famous, as the dictator who ruled Libya for four decades.

Figuring out how to render names in the Arab world is very difficult for the non-Arabic speaking media. Also, deciding which of each person’s several names to use is tricky, too.

We live this on a daily basis, at The National.

We spend a significant amount of time discussing how names should be spelled. Trying to be consistent. Giving a good reason for a change. Thinking about how it should be spelled upon first usage.

It matters. Greatly. Most Arabs want the best possible/most accurate English transliterations of their names. And, at the newspaper, where our only archive is the website, inconsistency in spelling will make a search for that person’s history a crap shoot.

For example:

An Iraqi native is the coach of the local Ajman soccer club. His name is Abdulwahab Abdulkader. Except when it isn’t.

It currently is spelled Abdul Wahab Abdul Qader on the Pro League website. It has been spelled in our newspaper in ways other than those two, because the wheel is often reinvented, when transliterating names into English. One person will render it this way this year, another that way next year. Or a third or fourth way.

To date, Arabic speakers who can spell in English have pretty much been able to choose how their names will appear, and sometimes they decide to change it.

In this story, two cousins who have the same family name choose to use it differently. One goes by Abdulrahman Al Janahi. The other is Hamad Janahi — who drops the “Al” entirely, when asked to give his name.

Further confusion arises over which names to use. In the Pro League, players are typically known by their first two names, generally their given name and their father’s name, but not their family name. That is, by two names out of the 4-5-6 word string of words that make up their complete name.

However, a minority of players use the family name, which begins with an Al.  But then they might change. The top goalkeeper at Al Wahda was known as Adel Al Hosani for several years, but in this past season he was listed as Adel Mohammed. In The National, we continued to call him Adel Al Hosani.

Also, various names that are the same can be rendered in more than one way. Mohammed, for example. The most common variations are Muhammed and Mohamed or even Muhammad (as in the boxer, Ali).

Our approach to this is to standardize the names, unless a person is already known, in the English-speaking world, for a different spelling. Thus, every Abdullah spells it with the H. It is Mansour, not Mansoor. It is Mahmoud, not Mahmood. Yousuf, not Yousef. Mahdi, not Mehdi. Abdulrahman is not spelled Abdulrehman or Abdul Rahman or even Abdur Rahman.

At least, that is what we try to do.

It is a constant challenge. Even the UAE government is trying to deal with it.

Apparently, names are being changed by the government when local citizens get their documents renewed.  One man turned in a passport with “Hashemi” (in English) and it came back “Hashmi.” Another went from Mehairi to Mheiri.

Why the government intervention? Transliterations by different people at different times lead to Arabs from the same family carrying documents (like passports) with a name spelled several ways. Which leads to confusion at schools and immigration areas in airports.

This is not unique to Arabic, of course. Any language that uses something other than the Roman alphabet will pose challenges when transliterated into English.

We think about all this. A lot. We strive for uniformity and consistency. It is not easy.