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Vol.17, 2015

Spelling Arabic Personal Names in English

Abstract
Scholarly journals and other academic institutions which publish on Arabic and/or Islamic issues tend to enforce
their house guidelines on transliterating Arabic terms and names. Most guidelines require the use of special
characters, macrons, etc., which academics cannot but follow if they want to be published. The guidelines,
however, are not uniform across the board of journals. Despite the mandated adherence to the guidelines, the
requirement apparently does not apply to the (English) spelling of the name(s) of the author(s) themselves.
Different authors, whose first and/or family/last names are spelled in exactly the same way in Arabic, may spell
their names in English in diverse ways. This article looks at how 103 individual Arab authors in sixteen English
medium journals spell their own names. The survey covered the past four years/volumes. Using linguistic
principles from phonology, morphology, word boundary, and Arabic orthography (in contrast to English
orthography), this researcher proposes an account for the obvious diversity in name spelling by Arab writers.
Keywords : names, orthography, Romanization, transcription, transliteration

1. Introduction
“Is this the ‘correct’ way to write my name in English?” is a question that has frequently been asked this
researcher by many Arab learners of English as a foreign language. On the other end of the issue, this researcher
has also been frequently asked by native speakers of English about the ‘correct’ way of vocalizing an Arabic
name spelled in English orthography. The one to one relationship of letters to sounds in the spelling of foreign
names is only a desired wish. Professional and academic organizations have proposed numerous universal
schemes of representing foreign scripts and revised them over time. The first proposal by the International
Phonetic Association of the late nineteenth century, dubbed as ‘visible speech’, went into the fifth edition in
2005. (ipa.org 2014) The (British) Royal Asiatic Society also suggested a set of guidelines for dealing with the
conversion of scripts such as Sanskrit and Arabic into the English writing system in the late nineteenth century.
More recently, libraries, e.g., the Library of (US) Congress, and library associations, news reporting agencies,
programmers of machine translation software, Google maps specialists, and cell phone companies have had to
address the same issues, each institution for its particular goals, services, and topics. (Anonymous 1934;
Wedderburn 2011; Whitaker 2011; Ellis 2012; ARAN 2013; Anonymous 2014)
In the academic publishing sphere, journals dealing with topics such as Arab and Islamic history, culture, media,
languages, and religion, ask their contributors to follow the house guidelines on writing Arabic names and
special terminology. Authors comply with this requirement. However, there is not a single set of guidelines that
is accepted and used by all concerned, and because of this variation, some revise their systems, (Rietbroek
2010). The journals and publishers of similar nature and content do not, however, require authors to spell their
own names according to the guidelines.
It is the issue of how Arab authors spell their own names (in English) that is the focus in this article. For one
thing, some complexities of representation in the guidelines, such as the use of diacritics and macrons, have been
described as ‘cumbersome’ (Rietbroek 2010, 2) and abiding by them is restricted to spelling the names in the
body of the texts. Tolerance by the publishers appreciated, authors with the same first or last/family name in
Arabic, nonetheless, do not follow a single standard but write their name(s) in different ways. One example, the
name ‫ محمد‬, may suffice at this point for the spelling of their first name (although some have it as family name
too. The following ways have been identified in the sample for this study: Mohamad, Mohammad, Mohammed,
Muhammad. Other studies have found other ways of writing the name in English including Muslims from other
nations. (Ellis 2012: 8) The spell check in the Microsoft word document gives four different spelling options for
this name. For variation in the spelling of the family/last name, the name ‫ ﺣسن‬, is an example. The following
different ways have been found: Hassan and Hasan. At the surface, the differences in spelling Arabic names as
in the examples above may give the impression of a lack of underlying principles. However, insights from some
linguistic and orthographic issues in both Arabic and English can clarify why some prefer to use one spelling to
other ways of spelling.

2 Hypothesis
The present research proposes that under most instances of variation that have been observed, a particular
sociolinguistic principle or another one pertaining to Arabic or English is at work.

3. Arabic Phonological and Graphological Parameters

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ISSN 2422-8435 An International Peer-reviewed Journal
Vol.17, 2015

Nine linguistic aspects/features about Arabic form the theoretical foundation for the explanation of variation in
this paper.
3.1 Written words in Arabic consist of letters that are joined to each other, basically similar to writing in
print in English, with some qualifications that are mentioned below. (See 4 below.) A sequence of
disjoined letters such as ‫ ن ص ر‬does not make a word but a string of letters as in UNHCR (United
Nations High Commission on Refugees) in English (vocalized as youeneitchseeare). To become a
word, the above sequence must have the joined form ‫ نصر‬. This is a sequence of three consonant letters
and the unrepresented (short) vowels are supplied by the literate reader according to the linguistic
context (similar to the convention in writing Hebrew). If any one of the three long vowels, on the other
hand, is part of the word, the vowel is represented in the word by a letter, e.g., ‫ ناﺻر‬or ‫ نصير‬etc.
3.2 Only consonants and the three vowel letters (representing the three tense/long vowels) are written.
(During early literacy training and in Quran texts, the three lax/short vowels are represented by super
and subscript diacritics and the absence of short vowels between consonants is represented by a small
superscript circle.) A rough demonstration from English (about the absence of vowels that native
speakers of English can fill in as they read) would be this sentence: W cn rd ths sntnc wtht vwl ltrs= we
can read this sentence without vowel letters.
3.3 The Arabic writing system has the feature that certain letters in the alphabet have different forms,
depending on the place in the word where they occur: initial, medial, and final. Here are illustrative
examples:
Letter Initial position Medial position Final position
‫ع‬ ‫عبد‬ ‫بعد‬ ‫باع‬
‫ا‬ ‫اﺻل‬ ‫ﺻا ل‬
‫ه‬ ‫ھذا‬ ‫فھد‬ ‫فاه‬
‫س‬ ‫سا ل‬ ‫مسار‬ ‫راس‬
3.4 As can be seen in the above table, most letters in word medial position join on both their sides in the
word to other letters. Only six letters do not join to the letter following them. However, spatial
proximity of the following letter must be maintained. These letters are: ‫ ا د ذ ر ز و‬. (Pedersen 2008
presents a detailed table.) In some words, the letters may all be of those that do not join to the letter
following them.. In such a case, the word is a sequence of disjointed but spatially close, individual
letters, e.g., ‫ اروى‬، ‫ ر وان‬، ‫ رزق‬، ‫ زواوي‬،

3.5 Arabic phonology has the feature of long consonant, geminates. Gemination is represented by a
single consonant letter and, if ambiguous, by a diacritic super script, which looks like the number 3
lying flat on its back ◌ّ . To native speakers of Arabic, the sound is long and is viewed as if it were a
repetition of the sound itself regardless of the position of the letter within the word. In English, such
consonant length can be produced and perceived at word initial morpheme/prefix morpheme boundary
as in immaterial, unknowable, illiterate, irregular, but not in suffixes, e.g., swimming, written, cutting,
or within the morpheme itself, e.g., umbrella, letter.
3.6 Standard Arabic is a case marking language, with suffixes indicating number and gender on nouns
adjectives and verbs and tense on verbs.. In standard writing, however, the case on singular nouns does
not appear because the mark is represented by suffix diacritical symbols and these do not appear in
normal writing as indicated above.
3.7 Arabic is also a (grammatical and biological) gender marking language. Nouns or names that end in
the singular with ‫ –ة‬/t/ with the case marker (as in sixth above) affixed to it are grammatically feminine
in gender whether the reference is biologically female , e.g.‫ سامية‬or grammatically feminine, e.g., ‫ طاولة‬.
There are also nouns with a male reference which are grammatically marked as feminine, e.g., ، ‫امية‬
‫ عكرمة‬. In their citation form (i.e., not in connected standard speech), the feminine marker is replaced to
a low front short/lax vowel, which is phonetically a schwa sound. Therefore, a name like ◌ٌ ‫ سميرة‬is
vocalized/pronounced as ‫ سمير‬with the schwa sound following the final consonant. But in writing, the
common practice in is to add the ‫ ه‬letter after the final consonant letter, ‫ سميره‬,
3.8 The definite article (‫ )ال‬is always a prefix, not a word by itself as the case is with the in English.
Phonologically, the /l/ sound assimilates completely in (standard and nonstandard) speech to the sound
immediately after it if that sound is also made by the tip of the tongue; that is, both share the same
active articulator.
3.9The basic sounds of the following English letters: b t d r z s f k l m n h and w have their roughly
equivalent basic sound values in Arabic. Whereas English has five vowel letters (their combinatory use
is not relevant to the issues here) Arabic has three vowel letters
4. Data Source
For this article, the first and last/family names of 103 Arab authors who have published at least once in one of

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ISSN 2422-8435 An International Peer-reviewed Journal
Vol.17, 2015

sixteen journals over the past four years are the source data. (Publications on Arabic proper names, e/g.,
Alghamdi (2010) and Al-Hadithi (2010) adopt a prescriptive orientation and address the Arab users of English in
general, but these publications do not account for the varied choices in the names as such.
The names analyzed in this article are those of published authors. Most of the publications where these names
appeared deal with Arabic in at least one respect. To maintain personal privacy of all authors, none of the names
appears in its full form. Rather, the names have been taken as either first names or last/family names. Some
authors share the same last/family name and in some cases the name could a first name for one author but a
family name for another author, e.g., Nasser. The list of the journals is in the Appendix.
5. Population Specification
The names that have been identified in the journals do not include the names of Arab authors who come from
countries that have been (heavily) influenced by French as a second language such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia,
Djibouti, and Lebanon. Muslims from other countries, e.g., Turkey, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc., have also been
precluded on grounds of precluding distracting influence from their writing systems.
6. Method
The names of 103 Arab authors as spelled in English have been classified according to one or more
features in their English spelling. In Arabic spelling such names are written in one consistent
spelling form. Each group of English spellings will be examined with reference to the theoretical
framework drawn up above.
7. Data classification, analysis and explanation of variation
7.1 The first group of Arabic names to examine in the data is the following: Abdullah, Abdalla,
Abdallah. These three versions represent one normal spelling in Arabic ‫ عبد ﷲ‬. This written form
does not include any indication of the type of case for the first or second of the two words.
Therefore, spelling the first word in English as Abda or Abdu has no morphological rationale.
Turning to the use or no use of the ‘h’ at the end of the name in English, the use of the ‘h’ letter
relies on the occurrence of the ،‫ ه‬، letter at the end of the name. This way of spelling can be viewed
as following a letter for letter transfer from one language (Arabic) into the other (English). On the
other hand, the absence of the ‘h’ letter in the other case reflects actual pronunciation. It should be
pointed out that the name consists of two free morphemes which have been combined to form one
compound word as in’ classroom’ in English. Furthermore, the third letter of ‫ عبد‬does not join to
the following letter). Proper names which have ‘Allah’ as an integral part have appeared in the data
as single words, e.g., Hamdallah.
7.2 Second, the names which contain the morpheme ‘Abd’, with the exception of names that have
the term ‘Allah’, as mentioned at the end of the previous paragraph. In this group, the
morpheme is followed in all cases in the data, but not in the absolute distribution in Arabic, by
another free morpheme that expresses an attribute of God. How the morpheme ‘Abd’ and the
attribute following it are transliterated exhibits obvious variation. Here are a few examples:
Abdelkader, Abdul Hakim, Nasser-Abdel, Abdel-Latif, Abdessamad. In the first example, the
whole (family or first) name is spelled as a single word; in the second example, the name
appears in the form of two words. Another variation in the spelling of the ‘Abd’ group splits
the word expressing God’s attribute ‘Al/Elatif’ into two parts, one part containing the letter
representing the /l/ sound and affixing it to the ‘Abd’ part, inserting a hyphen and then writing
the word ‘Latif’.
7.3 What stands out in this group of names is that none (in the sample) is spelled with a final ‘i’
letter in the ‘Abd’ part of the name, i.e., writing it as ‘Abdi’. Reference to this point will be
made below in the section on vowels.
7.4 Family/Last names in Arabic that have the initial part ‫ ابو‬have more than one transliteration in
the data collected. Two points are relevant in this connection: vowel representation (which will
be part of a point below) and the transliteration form status. In the theoretical section above, it
was pointed that letters in Arabic words are strung together unless there a constraint on the
letter joining principle. The Arabic letter ‫ و‬does not join to the following letter, and hence,
there is some difference among researchers concerning transferring the mandatory space
between this part of the name in Arabic or not doing so. Three patterns have been identified.
The first two forms are: Abu xxxx and Abuxxx, Abu Elhija and Abouelezz, respectively. Each of
the three choices has an underlying principle determining its form. For the independent Abu,
the determining factor is the fact that it is a free morpheme, i.e., a word by itself. As for the
joined Abu, the whole name is considered as a word with two parts that appear as such because
of the writing constraint of not joining ‫ و‬to the following letter. The third form for spelling ‫ابو‬
in English is the compromise form with a hyphen between the two parts, Abu-xxx, e.g., Abu-
Rmeileh.

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ISSN 2422-8435 An International Peer-reviewed Journal
Vol.17, 2015

7.5 Another pattern of variation in choice concerns the family/last names that have the definite
articles as prefixes, the Al group. This part of the name is an integral part of the word and its
letter / ‫ ل‬/ joins to what is after it. Once again as in the previous section, because English
written words are units of spatially differentiated sequences of letters, it was found in the data,
as expected, that different authors deal with the point in different ways. First, some authors
have dispensed with it altogether, possibly in line with its being optional in informal/colloquial
Arabic speech, e.g., Dahhan, Saafin, Shiyab, Shunnaq, and Zyoud. Other authors have kept it
as part of the name but in four different forms: (1) In one form there is the use of the hyphen
after the capitalized first letter, e.g., Al-Khatib, (2) capitalizing the first letter and without a
hyphen, e.g., Al Masry, (3) without the capitalization of the first letter, e.g., el-Husein, el-
Nawawy, and (4) considering the entire name as one word, e.g., Elhallaq. Hedden (2007)
suggests alternatives but they are based on actual name spelling in English..
7.6 Although, gemination of consonants in English phonology within the word is limited to certain
prefixes, the use of double letters is part of the system of English spelling. In Arabic,
gemination is an aspect of phonology/pronunciation which is marked in writing only for
beginners. Most authors whose names include a geminate consonant use double letters in
spelling their names, e.g., Abbas, Abbood, Aladdin, El Hajj, Muhammad, Hanna (a male’s
name, the Arabic equivalent of John), Khayyat, Nazzal, Aboelezz. There are, however, fewer
instances where the Arabic gemination is not reflected in the spelling of some authors, e.g.,
Fawaz, Kamaluldin, (in contrast with Kamaluddin) Mohamed, Al-seghayer, Muhawi.
7.7 Next in the survey, there is the spelling which reflects the author’s dialectal (relating to dialec)
pronunciation. For example, the following names are spelled differently by different authors:
Muhammed vs. Muhammad (both names appeared in the same issue of a journal), Ahmed vs.
Ahmad, Amel vs. Amal, Ragab vs. Rajab, Al-ghamdi vs. Al-ghamidi, Heidar vs. Haydar,
Feissal vs. Faissal. These fourteen spellings are for the following seven names spelled in
Arabic in the same order above as: ،‫ فيصل محمد اﺣمد‬،‫ الغامدي‬، ‫ رجب‬،‫ أمل‬. The dimension of local
pronunciation difference is a regional reflex of the diglossia situation in Arabic, which can be
equated with the standard non-standard in other languages. Here are two examples from
English to illustrate the point: the pronunciation of the /t/ sound in words like center or
sentence, and how Cockney speaker realize the /t/ in but, bit.
7.8 Further to the above, there is the variation in representing the /s/ sound in intervocalic (and
vowel and sonorant consonant) contexts. (There is a /z/ sound in some groups’ pronunciation
of ‘translation’). Native speakers of English may often read the Arabic names spelled as
Hasan, Islam, Muslim, or Asma with a medial /z/ sound. Aware of this tendency, some Arab
authors preempt it by using the ss sequence in spelling their names, e.g., Hassan, Hussein,
Bassioney, Bassma.
7.9 As for the feminine marker suffix on names, it is represented in two ways. On the one hand,
there is /ah/, as in Bassmah, Fatmah. This spelling maintains a trace of the feminine
morpheme, /ah/. On the other hand, there is the pronunciation based spelling. The practice of
some other authors takes the phonetic representation of the name (which does not include the
/h/ sound) as in these names: Magda, Munira, Samira, Sawalha. This spelling has a vowel
trace of the reduced feminine marker, /a/.
7.10 Finally, the spelling of vowel sounds mostly follows tendency for economy of letters, i.e., of
using fewer vowel letters in English, whether the sound has a letter in Arabic or not. Several
sub patterns have been identified in the data: one for the long vowel after the consonant
followed by a short vowel after the second consonant, another for the short vowel after the first
consonant followed by a long vowel after the second consonant, and a third for the long vowel
after the first consonant followed by a long vowel after the second consonant. In the
following names, the first vowel letter stands for a long vowel sound (which is given a letter in
Arabic writing) and the second vowel sound (which is not given a letter in Arabic writing) is
also given a letter in spelling the name in English: Hafez, Hala, Naji, Saleh. The opposite
sequence of vowel length appears in these names, but the spelling in English reflects the
previous pattern, viz., an English vowel letter for a vowel sound in Arabic, Farid, Khalil,
Munir, Noha, Salman, Walid. The third sub pattern is illustrated in these names: Naji, Musa. In
addition, a double letter sequence spelling for the second (long) vowel sound and letter in
Arabic is used by some authors as in: Alkatheery, Khaleel, Muneera, Reem.
7.11 There appeared in the data a choice by some authors to remain within the one letter policy for
all vowels as an: Abdelhadi, Sawalha, Shehadeh, Munira.
7.12 A variety of vowel spellings could not be accounted for by reference to the principles outlined

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ISSN 2422-8435 An International Peer-reviewed Journal
Vol.17, 2015

in the framework of classification for the data.The following vowel alternatives have been
found: Abu, Abo, Abou; Suleiman, Soliman; Nasrin, Nesreen, Housni, Hosney, Husny;
Muneer, Mounir; Omar, Omer, Umar.
8. Conclusion
In the context of the above mentioned set of principles on Arabic phonology and orthography, an
order can be discerned (for most of the data) in what seems at the surface to be a situation without
order. Can these principles be generalized to writing Arabic personal names in English? No
definitive answer can be given. However, applied to a population of Arab academics of a larger
size, similar results are more likely to appear than not because the population of this study is a
special group of accomplished/published users of English. From this perspective, their
representation of their own names may be viewed as worthy of being taken as a legitimate object
of investigation. .
References

Alghamdi, Mansour. 2010. “Romanizing Proper Names: Saudi Arabian Experience.” In Sattar Izwaini (editor)
142 – 146
Al-Hadithi, Tara. 2010. “Towards a Proper English Transliteration of Arabic Proper Names.” In Sattar Izwaini
(editor) 89 -99
Anonymous. 1934 “Transcriptions of the Sanskrit, Arabic and Allied Alphabets.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (New Series) 66 (1) January 1934: 1 – 6. DOI:
http://.doi.org. S0035869x00083210 (academic traditions)
Anonymous.2014. “Arabic Names.” The Guardian Style Manual June 30, 2014
ARAN 2013 Automatic Romanizer of Arabic Names, a Website System
Ellis, Mike. 2012. Transliteration of Arabic Script in Machine Readable Travel Documents: Technical Report
Prepared for W63 for ICAO NTWG (Version 2.9).
Hedden, Heather. 2007. ‘Arabic Names’. The Indexer Volume 25 (3): 9C – 15C
Ipa.org. 2104 accessed February 12, 2015
Izwaini, Sattar. (Editor). 2010. Romanization of Arabic Names. Ministry of Culture: Abu Dhabi, UAE
Rietbroek, Pim. 2010. Brill’s Simplified Arabic Transliteration System. Leiden: Brill
Wedderburn, Jon. 2011. “Arabic Transliteration: What’s in a Name? WorldAccent Transliteration a blog:
London Whitaker, Brian. 2011.

Appendix
List of Journals Surveyed
Arab World English Journal
Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures
Arabic Sciences and Philosophy
Arabica (Brill)
Asian EFL Journal
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
Contemporary Islam
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies
Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies
Journal of Arabic Literature
Journal of Islamic Studies
Journal of Middle East Media
Journal of Middle East Studies
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (New Series)
Language Policy Journal
Names: A Journal of Onomastics
TESOL Arabia
Translation Journal
Translation Studies

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