How do you spell Muammar Qaddafi?

This name, which is spelled القذافي in Arabic, is spelled in so many different ways in the Latin alphabet:

Gadafi, Gadaffi, Gaddafi, Gaddaffi, Gadhafi, Gadhaffi, Ghadafi, Ghadaffi, Ghaddafi, Ghaddaffi, Ghadhafi, Ghadhaffi, Kadafi, Kadaffi, Kaddafi, Kadhafi, Khadafi, Khaddafi, Khaddaffi, Khadhafi, Khadhaffi, Qadafi, Qadaffi, Qaddafi, Qaddaffi, Qadhafi, Qadhaffi, Qadhdhafi, Qathafi

Why are there so many ways of spelling it? Which one should be used in general usage?

Solution 1:

Well, good question. I hate to dump a Wikipedia answer on you, but the site does point us in an interesting direction:

In 1986, Gaddafi reportedly responded to a Minnesota school's letter in English using the spelling "Moammar El-Gadhafi".[106] The title of the homepage of algathafi.org reads "Welcome to the official site of Muammar Al Gathafi".[107]

The article also references The Straight Dope, a mainstay fact-finding and generally informative and entertaining column written by "Cecil Adams" for The Reader, my hometown's free weekly, which elaborates on the issue. In it we find this bit of corroborative information:

How Should We Spell Gadhafi?

Well, there's no real right answer. However, the Straight Dope provides some sound advice. It notes that it is a general rule of thumb that if there is doubt over how to spell a person's name, you simply use the version that the person in question uses. In this case, it's a bit tricky since Khadafi spells his name in Arabic.

However, the Straight Dope points out a strange incident that sheds some light on this issue. Back in May, 1986, Kadafi wrote a letter to a class of second-graders in St. Paul, Minnesota. Underneath his Arabic signature was typed "Moammar El-Gadhafi."

[Emphasis my own]

The Wikipedia article also notes the difficulty in standardizing Arabic names:

Because of the lack of standardization of transliterating written- and regionally-pronounced Arabic, Gaddafi's name has been transliterated in many different ways into English and other Latin alphabet languages. Even though the Arabic spelling of a word does not change, the pronunciation may vary in different varieties of Arabic, which may cause a different romanization. In literary Arabic the name معمر القذافي can be pronounced /muˈʕamːaru lqaðˈðaːfiː/. [ʕ] represents a voiced pharyngeal fricative (ع). Geminated consonants can be simplified. In Libyan Arabic, /q/ (ق) may be replaced with [ɡ] or [k] (or even [χ]; and /ð/ (ذ) (as "th" in "this") may be replaced with [d] or [t]. Vowel [u] often alternates with [o] in pronunciation. Thus, /muˈʕamːar alqaðˈðaːfiː/ is normally pronounced in Libyan Arabic [muˈʕæmːɑrˤ əlɡædˈdæːfi]. The definite article al- (ال) is often omitted.

Solution 2:

It should be started with Q like Qatar:

Q قـ
Qazafi قذافی
Qatar قطر

I'm not sure about z/dh/th but doubt that it could be dd.

Also:

Iraq عراق
Quran قرآن
Qods(Jerusalem) قدس
Qiblah قبله

Solution 3:

I've seen this question in other venues too. The proper answer seems to be that the only "correct" way to spell it is to do it in Arabic.

There isn't a one-to-one mapping between Arabic glyphs and English ones. In fact, they don't even overlap very well at all. To make matters worse, English does not have a one-to-one mapping between its phonemes and its spelling.

So anybody translating a name between the two has little choice but to try to match phonemes between the two languages as best as possible (sometimes not at all). Then the poor slob has to arbitraily pick an English spelling for their phonemes.

The only way anybody doing all this could possibly say their result is the one and only correct one, would be if they are the holder of the name in question, and that's what they want others using.

Note that this same issue goes for any name from a language that doesn't use a Latin alphabet. Most Chineese folks I know just give up and use some short English nickname.