I've always spelled it that way, too. Don Sensing's latest posts on the topic have gone with "Qur'an," though.

In the Bible?

You're joking, right? Hard to tell sometimes...

Koran, not "Qu'ran."
Niger, not knee-ZHAIR.
Sandy Eggo, not [hyper-correct-Spanish-pronunciation] San Diego.[/hyper-correct-Spanish-pronunciation]

Etc.

Actually, James, I omit the apostrophe and just write Quran. Typing Qu'ran is unnecessarily complicated and signifies nothing.

The ' apparently refers to an Arabic pronunciation for which there is no English equivalent. Fine, but so what? I'm writing the word, not speaking it, and I have never heard any non-Arab try to speak it pronouncing the '.

And one more thing. Why call the Bible "the Bible?" It's not as though they called it that in Ancient Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic.

I meant to type, "signifies nothing in English." Also, Dean, write "Koran" all you want - you'll get no objection from me!

We call the Bible "the Bible" because we don't speak ancient Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic.

I think the whole process is nothing but an homage to PC. Blacks went from Colored, to Black, to African-American, to People of Color. If Colored was racist, why isn't People of Color? Peking or Bejing? Who cares, the buildings are all in the same place aren't they?

Should we correct the next spanish speaker that refers to the US as the Estados Unidos? I certainly don't care how other languages refer to us.

The whole thing is a stupid ego trip by people who like to prove they are socially progressive. If you say "Torino", you're progressive. But troglodytes say "Turin".

I don't understand why we don't hear more about goings-on in Deutschland or España on the evening news. It's not like those countries don't exist.

Yes, MJ, and those same sophisticates will still talk about their trip to Paris, and not Pah-REE!

You're joking, right? Hard to tell sometimes...

Oh, come on dude. Life is too short. ;-)

Well, okay, I admit I'm of the crowd that pronounces it "Knicker-roggwa" instead of "Neeeeekarrrrragua."

And I admit that the first Qur'an I dipped my nose into, back in my teenage years, was Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall's translation, entitled (I believe) The Meaning of the Glorious Koran.

However, the big thick hardcover-- Arabic down one column, English down the other, with extensive footnotes and appendices-- which a friend of mine in Air Force linguistics gave me back about 1975 had "Qur'an" emblazoned on the cover. (He enlisted to learn Russian, somehow ended up learning colloquial Arabic, Cairo dialect, instead.)

And my present copy of the Qur'an (printed at the "King Fahd Holy Qur'an Printing Complex, AL-Madinah AL-Munawarah under The Auspices of The Ministry of Hajj and Endowments, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia") has emblazoned on its green hardcover: "THE HOLY QUR-ÂN English translation of the meanings and Commentary"-- only it's a macron and not a circumflex over the "A" in "QUR-ÂN." In fact, it is much the same edition as my friend gave me, only the footnotes and commentary have been vetted by a more recent hand for theological orthodoxy.

I dunno, not knowing any Arabic, I suppose when I spell it Qur'an, some (true or false) cognate out of Hebrew (qoph, resh, 'aleph or whatever) is floating around in my mind. Note I drop the whatever-thingy over the a, and the dash, or whatever, mutates into an apostrophe-- which makes my transliteration neither fish nor fowl.

So, Dean, unless you're going to pronounce a fatwa on me (is "DIRAE" a "bright" translation of fatwa?), I think I'll stick to my idiosyncratic semi-demi-cross-misspelling. :)

Hmm, I misread "onomastic cringe" as "onanastic cringe" -- quite a different story, eh?

I personally tend to pronounce Spanish names the way a Spanish speaker would pronounce them (aan-hell if talking about a guy named Angel, if he prefers it that way. But I probably would say "mekxico" not "meh-heeco" because it would just be pretentious; my hispanic friends would never let me hear the end of it. It's rather egotistic to assume that you know how to pronounce x foreign language right, better just to go with the accepted English equivalent. Unless you want to be pretentious, patronizing and egotistical as seems to be the case with the You-Know-Whos.

I prefer 'alcoran', myself. It's what's listed in my bybel, at any rate.

Any spelling in English is an approximation, and I do not see Qu'ran as preferable to Koran outside of an overview course of comparitive mythology - er, religion.

For centuries it was Peking, now it is Beijing - does anyone really think either comes close to the actual name of the city? For that matter, language-impaired types like myself (US Northeastern American, some other American [That's right, eh? Or BBQ], smattering of BBC Comedy, escargot French, Riesling German) cannot correctly pronounce the official name of LA.

John:

an overview course of comparitive mythology - er, religion

Thanks for taking the heat off me! Now I'm no longer #1 in line for a fatwa, among those who've posted to this thread. Them Net censors over in the KSA are ever-vigilant, and they don't miss a trick... ;)

BTW, if my memory isn't playing tricks on me, isn't the standard pronunciation on the BBC World Service "Loss Anjulleeeeez"?

Chad:

"Alcoran"? Hey, I rather like that one myself.

I myself still say "Peking" rather than "Beijing"-- for the capital of far Cathay.

People who write Quran rather than Koran are just doing a bit of an intellectual conceit - essentially saying they are more deeply versed than anyone who doesn't write it the way they write it.

As for me, I've actually been to the middle east and hear Koran pronounced and, hey presto!, it sounds like "koran" to me. I do, of course, have a tin ear and can't carry a note in a bucket, so to others it might sound like "quran" - but the standard usage for, oh, 500 years in English has been "koran" and so lets just leave it at that.

Of course there will never be absolute consistency in the spelling of this or many other "imported" terms or place names. And (except to avert extreme confusion) why should there be? Some people will always spell such terms one way, some people will always spell them another way. For a wide variety of reasons, or for no reason at all.

And that's just hunky-dory with me.

Hell, I don't even worry about foolish-hobgoblin consistency in my own practice on these matters. With nineteen "imported" terms out of twenty, I'll use the traditional, long-established anglicized spelling and pronunciation: "Peking" instead of "Beijing"; "Bombay" instead of "Mumbai" (say what?!); "Moscow" instead of "MoskVAH"; "Norway" instead of "Norge"; etc., etc. But with maybe one "imported" term out of twenty, for a wide variety of reasons, or for no reason at all, I'll go with some variant spelling or pronunciation.

"Liberty Hall, boys, Liberty Hall!"

At least Peking --> Beijing made some sense, as the new spelling encourages people to pronounce the name more "correctly." Spelling the name of the Koran with a Q doesn't accomplish a f'n thing, as both K and Q are pronounced the same in English, and neither letter is used in Arabic.

Isn't Arabic written in a completely non-roman script? So, any transcription as long as it reasonably approximates the pronunciation would seem to be as good as any other. When I see Koran, or Quran, or Qu'ran, I know it refers to the holy book of Islam. How is it spelled in, say, Greek? The Japanese have devised an ingenious system whereby foreign words have their own syllabary, kata kana (actually that is just a romanized version, but you get the idea).

A German friend of my step-mother's once laid into my dad for pronouncing her name, Karin, in American. She self-righteously declared "My name is not 'Karen', it's 'Car-rrrrreeeen'", to which he replied "Fine. Then my name is not 'Toe-moss', it's 'Thomas'".

Emily,

Reminds me of the time when I was in France - after trying mighty hard to pronounce things right and getting rude looks from the Frogs, I spent my last few days deliberately misprounouncing things...

As for the capital of far Cathay (Pekin Beijing Pei-ching Peking Peiping Beiping) maybe we could just call it "Larry" and be done with it. :)

If the Russians can get away with still calling China "Kitai", why not?

And I think "Karin" (pronounced "Car-rrrrreeeen") would make a splendid new compromise spelling for the Book Formerly Known as Koran/Quran/Qur'an/Alcoran.

I think my biggest objection to "Qu'ran" is that we don't put apostrophes in the middle of words in English, and "Qu" is supposed to be pronounced "kw."

Dean, you've got a point there about qu. Though looking in Webster's Third New International Dictionary, I find the following words which start with q plus something other than u: qabbalah, qadarite, qadi, qaimaqam, qantar, qaraqalpaq, qarmatian, qashqai, qasida, qat, qatabanian, qazaq, qere, qeri, qibla, qinah, qintar, qiyas, qoph, qoran, qre, q'ri. To which we could add quraish, quraishite, qur'an or quran, qursh, qutb, qyrghyz. Note, many if not most of these terms come from Arabic, a couple come from Hebrew.

Meanwhile, working on my new EZ Method™ of names for Chinese cities, I've decided that the city of Canton alias Guangzhou (and "The Chinese abbreviation of Guangzhou is Yue") may as well be referred to as "Jenny."

How the hell old is that Webster's? This sounds like some new-edition (post-1980 or so) craziness where the Onomastic Cringe probably began...

Didn't we just finish a war a few months ago to determine once and for all that you can't have a Q that isn't followed by a U? That's got to count for something.

Dean:

Nope, copyright © 1971 by G. & C. Merriam. Co.

Xrlq:

That's why Iraq will soon be changing its name to Irak. ;)

I got into an argument about the notion that you should call a place what the locals call it, with a former co-worker of mine. I told her that Switzerland has three official languages, and god knows whether we should call it die Schweiz, lá Suisse, or Svizzera. And while everyone knows that Munich is a city in Bavaria, how many English speakers know that München is a city in Bäyern? Honestly, most people I know already have enough trouble learning geography and speaking English. Eschew obfuscation--that's my motto.