sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

All Change

I could have sworn that at 7am this morning, this Guardian news story was spelling Gadafy Gadaffi.

At first glance, I thought it said gadfly. Now, there's a thing: "a persistent irritating critic; a nuisance."

And there's only 3,300 people (on google of course) who spell it with a Y. The other 26,000 spell it Gadaffi. Probably a transliteration thing. But at what point does someone on a newsdesk say "from now on, folks, we spell World Leader A like this?"

It reminds me of the time when I lived at home, and a friend of mine came over for Friday night dinner (chicken, obviously), and when he said to my Mum he was a vegetarian, she said "but you weren't when you came for dinner last week." And he said, "you've got to start somewhere."

So, if you want to respell your name, now's your chance.