CHAT: Gadhafi (was: silly phonology etc.)

Mangiat wrote:

> > Elsewhere, too, apparently: Mu'ammar Qadhdhafi's name once appeared at the
> > bottom of a letter (in English) as "Gadhafi".
>
> Who is this? Is he the president of Libia? That, at least in Italy, is named
> Gheddafi /ged'dafi/.
Just so.  His name begins with a qaf, and so the transliteration "Qaddafi"
(or when being exact, "Qadhdhafi") was usual.  There are lots of other
variants, including the bizarre "Khadafy".

Then some American school children wrote him a letter, and he replied in
English, signing his name "Gadhafi".  So then that was adopted as the
preferred transliteration.  After all, a man's name (even in an alien
alphabet) should be what he says it is.

At present, Google finds 41,000 references to "Gadhafi", and only 6100
references to "Qaddafi".  "Khadafy" gets a mere 2200, and some of these
may be to someone else.  A list of alternatives used as a test of
the "grep" program appears at
http://download.sourceforge.net/mirrors/OpenBSD/src/gnu/usr.bin/grep/tests/khadafy.lines
,
and a regular expression which catches most or all of these
can be found at .../khadafy.regexp .

Finally, Cecil Adams gives us the straight dope at
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_264b.html , including his official
*title*, which is not "President" or anything like it.  Check it out,
I'm not telling.

--
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