Clarification reagarding Bin Laden

I noticed this back in the "Bin Laden Media Blitz" era...
Perhaps someone can help me understand...

Why do most people on fox news refer to him as USAMA instead of OSAMA?

*U*BL instead of *O*BL?

What is this discrepancy?

I always wondered, are they 2 different people they are talking obout? Is USAMA some sort of insult? Is there just a glaring and strange discrepancy no one picked up on?

It made me suspicious initially as I remeber O'Reilly caught my attention, always sayin UBL or USAMA over and over again...
Mr O'Reilly, the man who has mastered the art of getting every last point of truth and reason he can find, with the sole purpose of wisking and baking this truth and logic into a bottomless hors d'oevre tray filled with the sweet, flaky morsels of "lie-layered" baclava.

Originally posted by theBLESSINGofVISION
I noticed this back in the "Bin Laden Media Blitz" era...
Perhaps someone can help me understand...
Why do most people on fox news refer to him as USAMA instead of OSAMA?
*U*BL instead of *O*BL?
What is this discrepancy?

I think the discrepency is down to pronunciation. Or maybe some people at FOX are better than others at sounding their 'O's than they are at sounding their 'U's?

At the end of the day, you know who they are talking about....

According the the FBI, his names are:

Usama Bin Laden, Usama Bin Muhammad Bin Ladin or Shaykh Usama Bin Ladin.

So I'm thinking you should be asking where the "Osama" is comming from, not where "Usama" is comming from.

I browsed trough archive.org and checked some .gov webpages that had timestamps from before 1999 and hes always been refered to as Usama there too.

[edit on 9/10/05 by thematrix]

Either spelling is correct (or incorrect, technically). Osama/Usama's real name is not spelled with English characters, so what we have are approximations. Muamar Kaddafi has about 100 known spellings of his name in English, he himself used multiple ones, as an example (check out his wikipedia entry for a list of them all). If you wanted the correct spelling of Osama's name, you'd have to see it in arabic characters.

-koji K.

Originally posted by koji_K
If you wanted the correct spelling of Osama's name, you'd have to see it in arabic characters.

-koji K.

Just done a translation of ' Osama' from English to Arabic.

This is what it looks like in Arabic أسما

When translated back to English you get this translation 'asmaa

Bin Laden looks like this خانة مثقّل ب

So what do we go with?

By the way, the translator i used is Systran.



[edit on 9-10-2005 by Bikereddie]

Originally posted by Bikereddie

Originally posted by koji_K
If you wanted the correct spelling of Osama's name, you'd have to see it in arabic characters.

-koji K.

Just done a translation of ' Osama' from English to Arabic.

This is what it looks like in Arabic أسما

When translated back to English you get this translation 'asmaa

Bin Laden looks like this خانة مثقّل ب

So what do we go with?

By the way, the translator i used is Systran.



[edit on 9-10-2005 by Bikereddie]

I'm not sure, I don't speak arabic myself. I checked wikipedia though, and they have the following:

Usāmah bin Muhammad bin `Awad bin Lādin (born March 10, 1957) (Arabic: أسامة بن محمد بن عوض بن لادن), commonly known as Osama bin Laden, or Usama bin Laden, (Arabic: أسامة بن لادن).

-koji K.

I have just done another translation of your quoted text.

أسامة بن محمد بن عوض بن لادن
translates to Osama Bin Mohammed Bin compensation of Bin Laden

and أسامة بن لادن
translates to Osama bin Laden exactly

Originally posted by Bikereddie
I have just done another translation of your quoted text.

أسامة بن محمد بن عوض بن لادن
translates to Osama Bin Mohammed Bin compensation of Bin Laden

and أسامة بن لادن
translates to Osama bin Laden exactly

I wonder if 'compensation of' is a very loose translation of 'son of'.. i think a lot of arabic names include a part that goes like 'son of' or 'daughter of' etc..

Not sure, but ya may have a point.
Any more Arabic you get, then i will willingly translate them for you.
I subscribe to Systran because i need translations daily within my job.

Just had a thought, maybe syrian sister can throw some light here? I did say mybe

It all depends on the way you translate it my brother.

Osama and Usama has the same particular syllable or sound to it. In english, you could spell it in anyway if still means and sounds the same as the source language.

Another issue I'd like to highlight is the Western Media of recognising or calling Osama Bin Ladin as Bin Ladin. In the context of the Westeners, Bin Ladin to them would be a kind of surname for that particular person. However, this is a wrong interpretation of the name. In his name, there is no surname.

Osama = As you all know is his freakin' name.

Bin = In translation to english means "son of".

Ladin = His father's name.

So it means Osama son of Ladin. So what the western media have been referring to is son of father which is Son of Ladin everytime they say Bin Ladin.

You don't go around saying Son of Bush do you?

The O/U thing is more or less a translation issue, Osama was the 9/11 figure head and that's become his western name when it should really be spelt Usama, don't know if there's much more to it than that.

But what about the other CIA operative:

In all of his statements and the several issued by his organization, Zarqawi is careful to use the Department of Defense version of his name (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) rather than a form of his real name (Fedel Nazzel Khalayleh, Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh or Fadel Nazzal al-Khalayleh). Why would he do that?

Most of his statements insult Iraqis but contain praise for such people as Moshe Dayan, “President Boosh”, and “Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz”. (How many Americans know Wolfie’s correct title?)

Link

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The origin of the name Usama means Lion, or King of the Jungle
I imagine roughly translates to his being the head or "King" of his faction as we would refer to it now. Osama im quite sure is merely a western translation (or mistranslation if you will) of the same.