[ExI] a trifle of nomenclature

[Damien Broderick]

At 08:34 PM 5/3/2007 -0700, Lee wrote:

>Every intelligence agency in the world believed that Hussein
>had the WMD, and he behaved and acted as though he did too.

I was under the impression that this was his given name, but no--and 
neither is Hussein his surname. Here's the good oil:

<The general rule for journalists is to shorten a subject's name to 
simply his last name on second reference. But in the case of the 
leader of Iraq, neither Saddam nor Hussein is technically a surname.

Journalists have worried that choosing to address the leader by his 
first name is somehow rude and smacks of the dismissive tone that 
President George Bush (and his father before him) has often been 
accused of using.

The country's main news wire service, the Canadian Press, along with 
its sister organization in the U.S., the Associated Press, have 
decided to go with "Saddam." The National Post and Toronto Star 
newspapers follow a similar pattern. CTV, meanwhile, has chosen to 
use "Hussein," while The Globe and Mail uses the more formal "Mr. 
Hussein." CBC seems to work around the problem by referring to him 
only as "Saddam Hussein" in their broadcasts.

Associated Press explains its position of using the Iraqi leader's 
first name this way:

"He is not usually referred to as 'Hussein' by people in Iraq or 
elsewhere in the Middle East. Political leaders and Iraqi citizens 
call him simply Saddam or by both names -- Saddam Hussein. Both 
Arabic- and English-language newspapers follow the same practice, and 
some that use both names in copy reduce it to Saddam in headlines.''

John Miller, who teaches "Covering Diversity" at the School of 
Journalism at Ryerson University says this issue could be simple: if 
most world leaders are referred to by their second name, then the 
leader of Iraq should be treated the same.

But CTV's Ellen Pinchuk, who is reporting from Baghdad, says the 
people of Iraq don't address their leader by name at all. Pinchuk 
says the Iraqis she's spoken to say they categorically do not refer 
to their president as "Saddam." When speaking of him in the press, 
they prefer to call him "Mr. President Saddam Hussein" on first 
reference, and then simply, "Mr. President," or "His Excellency."

"Many are not comfortable pronouncing his actual name in public 
within hearing distance of anyone," Pinchuk says.

The issue is complicated by the Arabic system of family names. The 
Associated Press recently explained its decision to refer to the 
Iraqi leader as "Saddam" this way:

"Hussein is not his family name. Saddam is his given name, and 
Hussein is his father's given name; this is common practice in Arab 
families. His full name is Saddam Hussein al-Majd al-Tikriti, but he 
uses neither al-Majd, which is akin to a family name, nor al-Tikriti, 
which is a name for his extended family, or clan, derived from the 
Tikrit region where the president is from."

Tim Harrison, a professor of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at 
the University of Toronto explains that Arabic names are structured 
so that their full names offer a sort of genealogy of the family. So, 
Hussein is not the president's last name; it is the name of his 
father, Hussein Abdul al Majid al Tikriti. The Iraqi leader's son is 
likewise named after him: Odai Saddam Hussein.

Strictly speaking, Hussein's family name is "al Majid." But this full 
name is never used in Iraq, except in very formal contexts, "perhaps 
to position him in the broader tribal confederation that he's from," 
Harrison explained to CTV News Online.>

What a relief to know that!

Damien Broderick