7 June 2011

Yes, even Capital Letters can be Political



ok don't take this post too seriously. It's something I've been playing around in my mind with.

So I've dropped the caps from my name. This was after I've dropped all but the first letter of my family name [but that's in another post] I'm no longer Khulud Kh. I am khulud kh.

Why? No, not for the same reason that bell hooks dropped her caps.

It's for a much simpler reason - my name in its original language - Arabic - is خلود.
No caps. And since it's an Arabic name, why should it be Englishized or Anglicanized (yes, I'm making up words along the way) or Westernized?
I realize that many languages in the world use caps - and for good reasons. But there are many other languages - Arabic and Hebrew just two examples - that don't have caps, and don't see any reason for using caps.

My Arabic name doesn't have caps, and therefore, it will not have caps in English either.

I've been interviewed by a German friend for a German newspaper for a theater-festival. I've explicitly asked her to make sure that my name appears without the caps. The editors refused to drop them, claiming that "nobody would understand that this is an artist name." So I was once again Khulud Kh. But this is not my "artist name." It's MY name. And I think that one of my very basic rights is to decide how I spell my name.

No - I'm not making an issue of it - as I wrote in the beginning, no need to take it seriously. These are just my ramblings at a late hour of the night. Sometimes I laugh at this, but sometimes it does annoy me. This invasion even of my very name and my ownership of it [not to mention ways of spelling and why I spell it with a "kh" and why there are no "o"s in it].

3 comments:

  1. شكرا لكم على هذا. وكانت جميلة، ومبروك على الفصل القادم من حياتك. قد يكون من المباركة ومليئة الفرح!

    Letters

    ReplyDelete
  2. well i sign by principle and feeling for many years (20 or 30 who remembers)only in small letters never capital. i very often also sign only in my first name. cause only i represent me not even my family. it is an ego thing for me the capital letters and conformity and esthetically ugly too. i am just talma and not Talma. i completely agree with you khulud that they had to respect and honor her request and not force her into caital letters. if they want your article than it is your name the way you give it to them. but conformity has many places to hide.... for me you are khulud!

    ReplyDelete

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