Curious Letter: Tāʼ Marbūtah
by Basil Dragonstrike

In this article on "Curious Names" I want to talk about, not a name, but a letter.

There is a letter in Arabic that causes romanization problems. It's called tāʼ marbūtah, and it occurs only at the end of a word, and almost always after a short "a". It is usually pronounced like "h" (and is audible at the end of a word), but is sometimes pronounced like "t". This happens (mostly) in what is called iḍāfa, which is when two uninflected nouns are placed one after the other, to show the first is "owned by" the second, and similar relationships. NB: before suffixes and in compound words, tāʼ marbūtah is pronounced like "t", and may even be changed into tāʼ, which has the sound of a standard "t".

tāʼ marbūtah's romanization has long been a problem. The variability in its sound has led various writers to romanize it differently. Some writers turn it into "t" always, others into "h" always, some ignore/drop it always, some write it "t" or "h" depending on the Arabic pronunciation, and it has even been turned into "ẗ". It is the difference between always "h" and always ignoring (the two commonest ways of dealing with tāʼ marbūtah) that lead to the SCA declaring one name could not mix "end in -a" and "end in -ah" words, on the basis such a name must be mixing "transliteration" methods. This isn't entirely true, but...well, go fight City Hall. By the way, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (EI2) and the Library of Congress (LOC) vary how they treat tāʼ marbūtah; EI2 drops it except in iḍāfa, when it's given as "t"; LoC makes it "h", except in iḍāfa when it is "t".

In the following, I'm going to romanize tāʼ marbūtaẗ as ẗ, to avoid ambiguity. So, some notes. Let's start with the Arabic for the name of this letter. It is تَاء مَربُوتَة. Romanized, this is tāʼ marbūtaẗ; as you see, the name of the letter ends with the letter. Heretofore, I've written tāʼ marbūtah, following the LOC romanization method. Hereforward, I will use tāʼ marbūtaẗ only.

How does this affect names? Let's look at some more-or-less popular names and see. The name often given as Atiya is عَطِيّة, ought to be romanized ʻAtīyaẗ. With transcriptions such as Atiyya, Atiyah, etc., you can see the sort of problems tāʼ marbūtaẗ can cause.

A much better-known name is Isa, which in Arabic is عِيْسَا --- a much better romanization is ʻĪsā. You'll note there's no tāʼ marbūtaẗ; but as I said, tāʼ marbūtaẗ usually follows a short a, not a long one.

Even more well-known is Fatima, or, in Arabic فَاطِمَة. This does end in tāʼ marbūtaẗ; note also that the first "a" is long, and the "i" is short---Fāṭimaẗ. The too-often encountered pronunciation fə-TEEM-mə is way, way off. Again, there are a number of transcriptions of this name, many caused by trouble-making tāʼ marbūtaẗ.

The Prophet Muḥammad's first wife, a figure of great significance in Islam, was (in Arabic) named خَدِيجَة. This I romanize Khadījaẗ -- again, there's tāʼ marbūtaẗ.

Not all names ending in tāʼ marbūtaẗ are feminine. Consider the first Ummayad caliph, مُعَاوَيَّة. Romanized, this is Muʻāwīyaẗ, which you'll see transcribed as Muʻāwiyya, Muʻāwiya, Muʻāwīya, etc. And then, there's our old friend, Ibn Baṭṭūṭaẗ -- yes, that name ends with a "ẗ". As well, there's the masculine name Ḥamzaẗ, the name of an uncle of the Prophet, and hence fairly common.

There are a number of people with "titular" names of the form ______ al-Dawla, sometimes romanized ______ al-Daula. But, this too ends in tāʼ marbūtaẗ, so it should be ______ al-Daulaẗ (or ______ al-Dawlaẗ).

Note that in some names, such as ʻAbd Allāh, the final "h" is the letter hāʼ, which looks like ه, and is always pronounced like the "h" in "hot", even at the end of a word.

Here's some more names ending in tāʼ marbūtaẗ: Usāmaẗ, Qatādaẗ, Ḥābibaẗ, Zubaidaẗ.

It's not just names where this letter becomes a pain to deal with: is a chapter of the Qurʼān a sura, a surah, a sūra, or a sūrah? Naturally, sūraẗ would remove the ambiguity. And what of the verses within the chapters? Is one of them an āya, an āyat, or what? Āyaẗ is unambiguous; BTW, notice that the plural is āyāt.

So, how can an amateur onomast make use of this information? Well, if you find a source of names that has macrons, with some names ending -ah and others ending -ā, you can bet the former end in tāʼ marbūtaẗ and the latter don't. If it uses macrons and has names ending -ah but none ending -ā, it's highly likely the names end with tāʼ marbūtaẗ. If the source generally uses macrons, and has names ending in -a but not -ah, and there are no names ending with a vowel with a macron, then you'll have to check another source, because that source doesn't give enough data to be sure where there are tāʼ marbūtaẗs. If there are no macrons, and only names ending in -a, most of them probably end in tāʼ marbūtaẗ, but again, there's not enough data to be sure. The best you can hope for is to find all the elements of your intended Arabic name in one source; then you won't have to worry (much) about how that source handles tāʼ marbūtaẗ.

I think by now you see why I consider tāʼ marbūtaẗ the most trouble-causing letter in Arabic. Here's hoping you won't have to deal with it too often.

Return to "Curious Names".