The Economist Style Guide

Bashar al-Assad	Rodrigo de Rato (Mr de Rato)
Joaquín Almunia	Yves-Thibault de Silguy
Yasser Arafat	Valéry Giscard d’Estaing
José María Aznar	Carlo Ripa di Meana
José Manuel Barroso (no need to include his third name, Duräo)	Fyodor Dostoyevsky
	Recep Tayyip Erdogan
	Gandhi
Traian Basescu	Felipe González
Deniz Baykal	Mikhail Gorbachev
Ritt Bjerregaard	Habsburg
Mangosuthu Buthelezi	Juan José Ibarretxe
Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo	Issaias Afwerki (Mr Issaias)
Cuauhtémoc Cardenas	Radovan Karadzic
Josep Lluis Carod-Rivera	Costas Karamanlis
Nicolae Ceausescu	Bob Kerrey (Nebraska)
Jean-Pierre Chevènement	John Kerry (Massachusetts)
Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz	Nikita Khrushchev
Luiz Inácio (Lula) da Silva	Kim Dae-jung
Carlo De Benedetti	Kim Jong Il
Gianni De Michelis	Vojislav Kostunica
Ciriaco De Mita	Sergei Kozalev
Emile Lahoud	Nicolas Sarkozy
Alain Lamassoure	Yitzhak Shamir
Alyaksandr Lukashenka	Yitzhak Rabin
Milan Martic	Wolfgang Schäuble
Slobodan Milosevic	Otto Schily
François Mitterrand	Gerhard Schröder
Ratko Mladic	Robert Schumann (composer)
Mahathir Mohamad (Dr)	Arnold Schwarzenegger
King Mohammed of Morocco	Mohammed Zahir Shah
Daniel arap Moi	Eduard Shevardnadze
Milan Mrsic	Haris Silajdic
Muhammad (unless it is part of the name of someone who spells it differently)	Banharn Silpa-archa
	José Sócrates
	Javier Solana
Franz Müntefering	Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Nursultan Nazarbayev	Aung San Suu Kyi (Miss Suu Kyi)
Binyamin Netanyahu
Gaafar Numeiri	Jean Tiberi
Mullah Mohammed Omar	Viktor Tymoshenko
Andrej Olechowski	Yulia Tymoshenko
Velupillai Prabhakaran	Atal Behari Vajpayee
Viktor Pynzenyk	Hans van den Broek (Mr Van den Broek)
Muammar Qaddafi
Burhanuddin Rabbani	Tabaré Vázquez (Dr)
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani	Grigory Yavlinsky
Cyril Ramaphosa	Viktor Yushchenko
Prince Ranariddh	José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (Mr Zapatero)
Reichmann brothers
Condoleezza Rice	Vladimir Zhirinovsky
Mikheil Saakashvili	Goodwill Zwelithini
Andrei Sakharov	Gennady Zyuganov

See also specific listings below.

Afghan

Gulbuddin Hikmatyar	Burhanuddin Rabbani
Ahmad Shah Masoud	Mazar-i-Sharif
Mullah Mohammed Omar

Arabic names and words

Al, al- Try to leave out the Al, Al-, al or al- where possible. This is common practice with some well-known figures like Muammar Qaddafi (not al-Qaddafi), but not all: Bashar al-Assad (not Assad), for example. Moreover, many names would look peculiar without al-, so with less well-known people it should be included (lower case, usually followed by a hyphen). On subsequent mentions, it can be dropped. Bin (son of) must be repeated: Osama bin Laden, thereafter Mr bin Laden. But it is often ignored in alphabetisation.

The Al-, Al-, al or al- (or Ad-, Ar-, As-, etc) before most Arab towns can be dropped (so Baquba not al-Baquba, Ramadi not ar-Ramadi). But al-Quds because it is the Arab name for Jerusalem and will be important in any context in which it appears.

Some common Arabic names are:

Abdel Aziz (founder of Kingdom of Saudi)

Abdel Halim Khaddam

Abdullah, King

Abu Alaa (aka Ahmed Queri)

Abu Mazen (aka Abbas)

Abu Musab al-Zarpawi

Adel abd al-Mahdi

Ahmad Jibril

Ahmed Chalabi

Ahmed Queri

Al Saud (not al-Saud, since the Al in this instance means house of)

Ali Abdullah Saleh

Ali al-Sistani (Grand Ayatollah)

al-Qaeda

Amin Gemayel

Anwar Sadat

Bahrain

Barham Saleh

Bashar al-Assad (Mr Assad)

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Chouf (the)

Farouq Qaddoumi

Gaza Strip (and City)

Hafez Assad

Hassan, Crown Prince

Hizbullah

Hosni Mubarak

Hussein, King

Ibn Khaldoun

Ibrahim al-Jaafari (Dr)

Islamic Jihad

Iyad Allawi

Jaafar Numeiri

Jalal Talabani

jamaat islamiya

Jeddah

King Fahd

Maronite

Marwan Barghouti

Masjid Sulayman

Masoud Barzani

Mohamed ElBaradei

Mohammed al-Maktoum

Mosul

Muammar Qaddafi

Muhammad Dahlan

Muhammad the Prophet

Mukhabarat

Muqtada al-Sadr

Mustafa Barghouti

Nuri al-Maliki

Omar Al-Bashir

Qaboos, Sultan

Rafik Hariri

Ras Tanura

Riyadh

Sabah al-Ahmad, Sheikh

Saddam Hussein

Sadiq el-Mahdi

Salam Fayyad

Samarra

Sana’a

Saud al-Faisal, Prince

Saud ibn Abdel Aziz (king of Saudi Arabia who followed Abdel Aziz)

Sharjah

Sharm el Sheikh

Shatt al-Arab

Strait of Hormuz

Suleiman Franjieh

Tal Afar

Tawheed

Umm al Aish

Wahhabi

Walid Jumblatt

Yasser Arafat

Zayed, Sheikh

Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali

And some common Arabic words are:

burqa

Fatah

Hadith

hajj

hijab

Hizbullah

intifada

niqab

See also Arabic.

Bangladeshi If the name includes the Islamic definite article, it should be lower case and without any hyphens: Mujib ur Rahman.

Belarusian If Belarusians (not Belarussians) wish to be known by the Belarusian form of their names (Ihor, Vital), so be it. But use the familiar, Russian, placenames (Minsk, not Miensk), and Alexander Lukashenko.

Cambodian On second reference, repeat both names, adding Mr: Mr Hun Sen, Mr Sam Rainsy.

Central Asian For those with Russified names, see Russian.

Askar Akayev

Heidar Aliyev

Nursultan Nazarbayev

Saparmurat Niyazov

Chinese In general, follow the pinyin spelling of Chinese names, which has replaced the old Wade-Giles system, except for people and places outside mainland China. Peking is therefore Beijing and Chou Enlai is now Zhou Enlai.

There are no hyphens in pinyin spelling. So:

Deng Xiaoping

Guangdong (Kwangtung)

Guangzhou (Canton)

Jiang Qing (Mrs Mao)

Mao Zedong (Tse-tung)

Qingdao (Tsingtao)

Tianjin (Tientsin)

Xi Jinping

Xinjiang (Sinkiang)

Zhao Ziyang

But:

Chiang Kai-shek

Hong Kong

Lee Teng-hui

Li Ka-shing

The family name comes first, so Xi Jinping becomes Mr Xi on a later mention.

Note that Peking University and Tsinghua University have kept their pre-pinyin romanised names.

Dutch If using first name and surname together, vans and dens are lower case: Dries van Agt and Joop den Uyl. But without their first names they become Mr Van Agt and Mr Den Uyl; Hans van den Broek becomes Mr Van den Broek. These rules do not always apply to Dutch names in Belgium and South Africa: Herman Van Rompuy (thereafter Mr Van Rompuy); Karel Van Miert (Mr Van Miert).

Note that Flemings speak Dutch.

French Any de is likely to be lower case, unless it starts a sentence. De Gaulle goes up; Charles de Gaulle and plain de Gaulle go down. So does Yves-Thibault de Silguy.

German Any von is likely to be upper case only at the start of a sentence.

Icelandic Most Icelanders do not have family names. They take their last name from the first name of their father, so Leifur Eiriksson, say, is the son of Eirikur, and Freyja Haraldsdottir is the daughter of Harald. If she marries Leifur Eiriksson, she continues to be known as Freyja Haraldsdottir, their son has Leifsson as his last name (patronym) and their daughter Leifsdottir. Both names (or more, if someone has two first names) should be used on first and all subsequent references (when they should be preceded by Mr, Mrs or the appropriate title). A few Icelanders, such as the late President Kristjan Eldjarn, do have family names. These are the only people who can be referred to by one name only.

Indonesian Generally straightforward, but:

Abu Bakar Basyir

Jemaah Islamiah

Muhammadiyah

Nahdlatul Ulama

Syafii Maarif

Some Indonesians have only one name. On first mention give it to them unadorned: Budiono. Thereafter add the appropriate title: Mr Budiono. For those who have several names, be sure to get rid of the correct ones on second and subsequent mentions:

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, for example, becomes President (or Mr) Yudhoyono.

President Joko Widodo is so popularly known as Jokowi that he should be referred to as Jokowi after the first mention.

Iranian Farsi, an Arabised version of Parsi (meaning of Persia), is the term Iranians use for their language. In English, the language is properly called Persian.

The language spoken in Iran (and Tajikistan) is Persian, not Farsi.

Here is a list of some words and proper names.

Abadan

Abu Musa

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Ahwaz

Ali Akbar Velayati

Bahai

Bandar Abbas

baseej

Bushehr

Hojjatieh

Kermanshah

Keyhan

Ali Khamenei, Ayatollah

Kharg island

Muhammad Khatami

Bandar Khomeini

Khorramshahr

Khuzestan

Lavan island

Mahdavi-Kani, Ayatollah

maqnaeh

Hossein-Ali Montazeri, Ayatollah

Hossein Moussavi

Queshm

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

Massoud Rajavi

Rezaiyeh

Hassan Rohani

Yusef Saanei, Ayatollah

Abdolkarim Soroush

Strait of Hormuz

Jalaluddin Taheri, Ayatollah

Taqi Banki

Tehran

Tudeh

Tumbs

velayet-e faqih

Yahyaoui

Italian Any De is likely to be upper case, but there are exceptions (especially among aristocrats such as Carlo Ripa di Meana), so check.

Japanese Although the Japanese put the family name first in their own language (Koizumi Junichiro), they generally reverse the order in Western contexts. So: Junichiro Koizumi, Heizo Takenaka, Shintaro Ishihara, etc.

Korean South Koreans have changed their convention from Kim Dae Jung to Kim Dae-jung. But North Koreans, at least pending unification, have stuck to Kim Jong Il. Kim is the family name.

The South Korean party formed in 2003 is the Uri Party.

Pakistani If the name includes the Islamic definite article ul, it should be lower case and without any hyphens: Zia ul Haq, Mahbub ul Haq (but Sadruddin, Mohieddin and Saladin are single words).

The genitive e is hyphenated: Jamaat-e-Islami, Muttahida Majlis-eAmal.

Portuguese Portuguese-speakers sometimes have several names, including two surnames. On first mention, if they publicly use the whole name, like José Manuel Durão Barroso, spell out the entire name. After that, use the second family name: Mr Barroso. Note that this is the opposite of the case with Spanish names (qv), where the first surname is used on second mention.

Russian Each approach to transliterating Russian has drawbacks. The following rules aim for phonetic accuracy, except when that conflicts with widely accepted usage.

No y before e after consonants: Belarus, perestroika, Oleg, Lev, Medvedev. (The actual pronunciation is somewhere between e and ye.)

1 Where pronunciation dictates, put a y before the a or e at the start of a word or after a vowel:

Aliyev not Aliev

Baluyevsky

Dostoyevsky

Dudayev

Yavlinsky

Yevgeny not Evgeny

2 Words spelled with e in Russian but pronounced yo should be spelled yo. Thus:

Fyodorov not Fedorov

Pyotr not Petr

Seleznyov not Seleznev

But stick to Gorbachev, Khrushchev and other famous ones that would otherwise look odd.

3 With words that could end -i, -ii, -y or -iy, use -y after consonants and -i after vowels. This respects both phonetics and common usage.

Gennady

Georgy

Nizhny

Yury

Zhirinovsky

But:

Bolshoi

Nikolai

Rutskoi

Sergei

Exception (because conventional): Tolstoy.

4 Replace dzh with j.

Jokhar, Jugashvili (for Stalin; bowing to convention, give his first name as Josef, not Iosif).

5 Prefer Aleksandr, Viktor, Eduard, Piotr to Alexander, Victor, Edward, Peter, unless the person involved has clearly chosen an anglicised version. But keep the familiar spelling for historical figures such as Alexander Nevsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Peter the Great.

Singaporean names have no hyphens and the family name comes first: Lee Kuan Yew (thereafter Mr Lee).

Spanish Spaniards sometimes have several names, including two surnames. On first mention, spell out in full all the names of such people, if they use both surnames. Thereafter the normal practice is to write the first surname only, so Joaquín Almunia Amann becomes Mr Almunia on second and subsequent mentions.

Often, though, the second surname is used only by people whose first surname is common, such as Fernández, López or Rodríguez. To avert confusion with others, they may choose to keep both their surnames when they are referred to as Mr This or Mr That, so Miguel Ángel Fernández Ordóñez, for instance, becomes Mr Fernández Ordóñez, just as Andrés Manuel López Obrador becomes Mr López Obrador and Juan Fernando López Aguilar becomes Mr López Aguilar. A few people, notably José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, choose to have their names shortened to just the second of their surnames, so he becomes Mr Zapatero.

Although on marriage Spanish women sometimes informally add their husband’s name (after a de) to their own, they do not usually change their legal name, merely adopting Señora in place of Señorita. Unless the woman you are writing about prefers some other title, you should likewise simply change from Miss to Mrs.

Swiss personal names follow the rules for the two languages mostly spoken in Switzerland: French and German.

Turk, Turkic, Turkmen, Turkoman, etc see placenames.

Ukrainian After an orgy of retransliteration from their Russian versions, a convention has emerged. Its main rules are these.

1 Since Ukrainian has no g, use h: Hryhory, Heorhy, Ihor (not Grigory, Georgy, Igor). Exception: Georgy Gongadze.

2 Render the Ukrainian i as an i, and the N as a y. So Vital, Kharkiv, Chernivtsi; but Volodymyr, Yanukovych, Tymoshenko, Borys, Zhytomyr. Change words ending -iy to -y (Hryhory).

However, respect the wishes of those Ukrainians who wish to be known by their Russian names, or by an anglicised transliteration of them: Alexander Morozov.

Kiev remains Kiev, not Kyiv.

Vietnamese names have no hyphens and the family name comes first:

Ho Chi Minh

Tran Duc Luong (thereafter Mr Tran)

See also place-names.