Talk:Hezbollah

Name

Howard--a pre-emptive strike (groan)...the reason for "Hezbollah" is very obvious: it is the common name in English. This should be our starting-point. If you want to argue, heroically, that it should be "Hezballah," be my guest, but we are going to start the article as "Hezbollah." --Larry Sanger 21:41, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Larry, please cite an authority for that it is the most common single transliteration in English. I am trying to create an article, to which there will be multiple redirects for every transliteration I know; I'm not trying to provoke naming arguments.

If you want the correct English name, it is Party of God, which then can be transliterated Hezb Allah. That being said, there are multiple transliterations. Can we try to get the article written with appropriate redirects and not stop the content from being written over transliteration arguments? When I worked for the Library of Congress, one of my projects was the multilanguage, multialphabet computer interface. Although that was before this group was formed, I am intimately familiar with both the problems of transliteration and the need for cross-indexing.

Now, if you were to go, for example, to the Library of Congress Subject Index, I would be happy to use whatever it considers the primary indexing term for this organization. Honestly, I don't know what they use. You will see, in my citation to Globalsecurity, a very well respected resource in politicomilitary affairs, that they use four different transliterations and explain the derivation. Please do me the same courtesy of citing the use of the name, and at least stop changing until I can get the redirects in place. I'm not trying to pre-empt anything. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:57, 8 March 2009 (UTC)