A diplomatic problem

When I was teaching English in Saudi Arabia I had one of those sets of letters and pictures on my classroom wall to teach the alphabet – Aa with a picture of an apple and so on. A colleague who spoke Arabic advised me not to put up Zz with a picture of a zip because it was very similar to a slang word for the penis.

Now I read in El País that a senior Pakistani diplomat, a former ambassador to the USA, South Africa and India, and high commissioner in Canada, has had his credentials refused by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. His name is Akbar Zeb.

There is  no ‘p’ sound in Arabic and the zip that I was told to avoid would have been pronounced as ‘zib’, so being called Zeb, a common Pakistani name it seems, is a bad move in Arab countries. But even worse, akbar means great, as in Allah akbar (God is great). Put the two together and, well, Monty Python did it in The Life of Brian with Biggus Dickus!

Comments

[Brian Barder]

Brilliant -- especially the illustration (magnifying glass, however, paradoxically required for full effect...)

[Peter Harvey]

The picture is just from a Google search for Biggus Dickus.