Michele Richinick from North Eastern University interviews Global Voices contributors.
Reblogged from Global Voices Offline
Qaddaffi vs. Gadhafi
From TIME:
You may have noticed reading the news recently, that there is no agreed upon way to spell the name of the current Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi. The controversy is well illustrated by a May 1986 letter to Minnesota second graders; the leader signed his name in English “Moammar El-Gadhafi.” The AP reported the event, “Second-Graders Get Letter From Khadafy.” In 2009, ABC News listed 112 different ways to spell Gaddafi, which have appeared in various news outlets. The leader’s name was even the topic of a 1981 Saturday Night Live sketch, offering the most creative spelling a one-way ticket to Tripoli.
So AP style says “Gadhafi”, based on the AP ideal that non-Roman names be spelled the way the so-named person prefers, and that Gadhafi’s 1986 letter to a group of Minnesota schoolchildren spelled it “Gadhafi” (no word on whether the Libyan leader himself typed out the transliteration).
Now, come to find out, in his recent letter to Obama, he spelled his own name, “Qaddaffi.” Will the AP change their stylebook to reflect it?
