Call him Saddam

By Jan Freeman, Globe Staff, 11/17/2002

RAQ'S PRESIDENT is back in our headlines, and with him the 12-year-old newsroom debate: What do we call Saddam Hussein when we're not calling him evil incarnate?

The standard practice is simple enough: Meet Joe Black, and on second reference he's Black. Meet Saddam Hussein, and thereafter he's Hussein. A few newspapers use courtesy titles - Mr. Black, Mr. Hussein - except when they're stymied by a mononymic celeb like Cher or Eminem. But first names, in news reports, were not an option - till the rise of Saddam, whose name has opened a rift between journalism's style arbiters.

In the Hussein camp are major newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. They have long treated "Saddam Hussein" as a Western name, making it Hussein or Mr. Hussein on second reference. This is the style preferred by readers who think "Saddam" sounds either demeaning or too friendly, as if we were calling a head of state Bobby or Al. (Of course, these feelings reflect modern prejudices; we don't mind calling Achilles or Beowulf or Leonardo -- or Saladin, the 12th-century Muslim warrior who hailed from Saddam's home village -- by one name.)

It's not just fuddy-duddies who resist first-naming. Jesse Petrilla, a 19-year-old Californian who called his newly released video game "The Quest for Hussein," told me he wanted to avoid both familiarity and formality: "We are not `buddies' with Saddam, nor does he deserve the title `Mr.' "

The Saddamite troops are led by the Associated Press, whose stylebook governs usage at thousands of broadcast and print outlets. And this army has plenty of good defenses. People should be called what they want to be called, says AP, and Saddam likes "Saddam." In the Middle East, whether in Arabic or English, he's never second-referenced as Hussein, only as Saddam.

Besides, the "Saddam" supporters point out, Hussein isn't really a last name -- it's his father's given name. His original name, the AP says, was Saddam Hussein al-Majd al-Tikriti -- name, father's name, a family name, and a hometown, but none exactly equivalent to our Western "last name."

And then, Saddam is the more distinctive moniker. There are lots of Husseins -- not least the late king of Jordan. Last time we tangled with Saddam Hussein, it was convenient to call him Saddam so as not to confuse him with the "good" Hussein, a generally pro-Western leader.

Do these arguments hold water? Maybe so, but the record suggests they all came after the fact. Right through the 1980s, until we were on the brink of Desert Storm, the print media -- including AP -- almost always used Hussein as the second reference for Saddam Hussein, even in stories that also mentioned King Hussein. (This was not cultural imperialism: Hussein himself had dropped the hometown designation from his name in 1977, and told other Iraqis to do likewise.) It was only during the Gulf War, when President Bush (the elder) was talking daily about Saddam, that media usage began to shift.

(Actually, Bush often said "SAD'm," with the wrong vowel and the wrong stress; the consensus seems to be that suh-DAHM, nearly rhyming with "prom," is as close as Americans will get. Some say that Bush mispronounced it on purpose, to annoy Saddam; another story claims the insult worked, because the Bush version was Arabic slang for "beggar" or "shoeblack." I'm dubious on both counts: We all know of Bush's verbal clumsiness; would it really have shocked Saddam to have his name mangled? But if you have supporting evidence, do send it along.)

Why did the media follow Bush's usage? Most likely, everyone just thought Saddam sounded better. The subject of "sound symbolism" is a slippery one in linguistics, it's true. But rhetorically speaking, wouldn't you rather monger war against Saddam, with its thudding consonants, than the airy, sibilant Hussein? Saddam: You can rhyme it with damn, start it with sad, or say it like Sodom, that archetypically wicked Biblical city. "The hiss of the s, the hard, implacable d, the exotic touch of the final m -- it's a name fit for an Oriental despot in a Puccini opera," says linguist Geoff Nunberg.

That's not an argument against "Saddam"; the only question is whether we gain more than we lose by granting Hussein the celebrity name treatment. Publications that take the long view have already decided: In dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference books, he's "Hussein, Saddam." And once he exits the world stage, we won't have to call him anything, not even late to dinner.

This story ran in the Boston Globe on 11/17/2002.
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