Talk:Umar al-Tilmisani

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Please don't change the spelling of his name!

One of my pet peeves writing articles on Arab political figures is the know-it-all amateurs (usually from the country in question) who come in and arbitrarily change the spelling of transliterated Arabic names to reflect the idiosyncrasies of their own country's pronunciation and transliteration choices. I have little doubt that someone (probably from the Ikhwan) is going to come here and look at the way I've spelled Tilmisani's name, and think to themselves, "that's not how we transliterate it here in Egypt!"; and they're going to want to change it to Telmesany or something like that.

Please don't.

The nonstandard transliteration of arabic names makes it extremely hard to search for and find people you are looking for. The solution is to- 1): just imagine you are pronouncing the name in idealized Fusha, then- 2): transliterate the letters from Fusha into English. ي becomes i; ا becomes a, و becomes u, etc.

Just think about this guys name for example. Why should we choose Egyptian transliteration over, say, Algerian, since that's where his family is from, and most non-Egyptians reading his name in Arabic are going to see it as Tlemceni anyway?jackbrown (talk) 09:50, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]