Talk:Rageh Omaar

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This Wikipedia page has Rageh Omaar born in Mogadishu. That contrasts with this BBC report apparently written by him "http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/6458377.stm" "I was born in Somaliland, the self-declared republic in the north of Somalia, where my relatives still live" He was indeed very young at the time and I've met many more aged Somalis who do not know their birthdates but never any with uncertainty of hundreds of miles about the place.SilasW 20:25, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I do not know where Rageh Omaar was born. I made the above note of the inconsistency and I included the pointer "See talk". "Mogadishu" also occurs on the back cover of one of his books. (My experience in the Somalilands was that one often did not give a correct initial reply lest somehow one was put at a disadvantage. I doubt if Rageh is indulging in such caginess.) Whoever changed "Mogadishu" to "Hargeisa" at the start of the article (and that person seems to be a frequent Wikipedia modifier) erred in two ways: 1. "See Talk" was not deleted when my "possibly Mogadishu, see Talk" was altered to "Hargeisa, see Talk" 2. The second paragraph now contradicts the first. Wikipedia needs well sourced facts carefully presented. SilasW 17:21, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

SOMALIS' NAMES The rest of us seem unable to understand that others do things differently. The article refers to "Omaar" but that is not the subject's name. His name is Rageh. Somalis do not have surnames, except when bureaucracy and expediency force them on them. Rageh Omaar is "Rageh son of Omaar" or Omaar's Rageh. To give an extended possible example: Ali Ahmed Mohamed is Ali s/o Ahmed s/o Mohamed and so on as far as needed to define the person unequivocally in the circumstances. Rageh and Omaar are not the commonest Somali names but a string of common names may need four though Somalis can quote a lineage of 12 or 20. (I mention, only to say that I do not, the complication of nicknames.) That works while the easiest English equivalent Z's Y's X's.........B's A could not as the most distant (and so for personal naming the least important comes) first.SilasW 18:04, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Don't the "correctors" of Wikipedia just enjoy typing in their hurried "corrections"! 18 March I noted a discrepency between the Wikipedia entry and a published source for Rageh Omaar's birthplace. Was it Mogadishu or Hargeisa? Someone jumped in and changed carelessly just one Mogadishu to Hargeisa. 27 March I pointed out that there was still an unchanged Mogadishu. By today the "new" Hargeisa has been replaced by Muqadisho with the second reference to Mogadishu spelled so. The English spelling is Mogadishu, the Italian is Mogadiscio, the Somali is Muqdisho (I think Google showed 110,000 prefering "Muqdisho" against 44 who go for "Muqadisho"). There is some elasticity in Somali spelling (most days even with no knowledge of the language you can spot differences between the headlines and the text in the BBC Somali pages) but Wikipedia should have consistency. What should one write for Mog? It would be weird to write "Roma" in a normal English reference to the capital of Italy. The more one sees the less one trusts Wikipedia. SilasW 19:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)