The apparent fall of the Qaddafi regime, and the likely capture (or killing) of the tyrant himself, will signal the end not only of four decades of internal repression and external terrorism, but one of the more vexing orthographic challenges in modern American journalism: the spelling of the colonel’s surname.

Qaddafi’s name, of course, is an Arab name, and the Arabic language has its own alphabet. But while a consensus was usually reached on comparable problems in spelling—”Khrushchev” from the Russian, “Mao” from the Chinese—there seems to be no single authority on the transliteration of Arabic, and so accounts of the Libyan dictator variously refer to Khadafy, Gathafi, Qathaffi, Gadafy, Kadafi, Qadhafi, and so on, ad infinitum—not to mention the question of whether the Arabic “el” or “al” prefix should be attached, or his first name is rendered as “Moammar,” “Muammar,” or “Mu’ammar.” (For the record, my official English translation of The Green Book, published in Tripoli by the Public Establishment for Publishing, Advertising and Distribution, renders the author’s name as Muammar Al Qathafi.)