Help Me Identify This Pakistani Counterterrorism Expert
October 14, 2014 10:50 AM   Subscribe

I'm looking for the identity of this Pakistani counterterrorism expert. In this [YT] documentary, the Chinese transliteration of his name appears as 古尼‧伊纳亚特‧欧拉‧罕‧尼亚文. Any ideas?
posted by klue to Writing & Language (4 answers total)
 
I can't identify the person, but the first character of his name appears to be 吉, not 古
posted by bradf at 2:49 PM on October 14, 2014


Best answer: The first character in the transliteration is 吉 (jí), not 古 (gǔ).

The full transliteration in pinyin reads:

Jí ní - yī nà yà tè - ōu lā - hǎn - ní yǎ wén

Which sounds roughly like:

Gee-nee yee-nah-yah-tuh oh-lah hahn nee-yah-wun

Searching in Chinese unfortunately doesn't come up with anything helpful, even on parts of the transliteration.

Somebody who actually knows something about Pakistani names should chime in, but I'm thinking the middle three words transliterate to "Inayat Ollah (or Ullah?) Khan."

I can't find a Pakistani name that is anything like "ni-ya-wen." "Ullah Khan Niazi" seems to be an extremely common Pakistani naming structure, though: there are a ton of them listed on this page. It's sort of conceivable to me that whoever transliterated the name into Chinese goofed and used 文 (wén, literature) instead of 字 (zì, word). That may be a stretch, but I've seen weirder Chinese typos.

It's also conceivable to me that a Chinese graphics tech saw "Gen. Inayat Ollah Khan Niazi" and didn't realize Gen. was a title or an abbreviation. Your average Chinese graphics tech probably knows less about Urdu names than I do, and has less free time on his hands than I apparently have. Since Inayat Ollah Khan Niazi seems to be an otherwise complete name, that's my best guess for where the "ji-ni" comes from.

And it turns out there is a General Inayat Ollah Khan Niazi, according to Wikipedia. That bio blurb doesn't say anything about connections to counter-terrorism, however, and I can't find a picture of him.

Disclaimer: I know about Chinese, not Urdu. Everything I know about Pakistani names I learned while puzzling this out. You should consult somebody who knows more about Pakistan than how to find it on a map.
posted by zjacreman at 2:54 PM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]


You should ask the lovely bardophile.
posted by adamvasco at 7:10 PM on October 14, 2014


Response by poster: Thanks to the both of you for pointing out the mistake in the first character. That's some impressive work, zjacreman, and I believe you are right on the mark. Having searched for the name you suggest, I've found a social networking profile with a matching picture to the person in the documentary. I have yet to confirm if he is in fact the general you link to, as there exists some mismatch in biographical data (birth year), though your Gen=吉尼 hypothesis seems sound.

it shouldn't be all that surprising if he turns out to be an obscure person in relation to counter-terrorism. The other foreign 'experts' in the documentary are some pretty shady characters, and there is enough mislabeling to go around. In general, it seems they were willing to interview or (mis)quote anyone supporting their views, regardless of their expert status in their respective countries.
posted by klue at 7:21 PM on October 14, 2014


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