Why is there an "h" in "Baghdad"? I'm finding that in spelling it, I rarely put the "h" in the proper place. And the reason for this, I've determined, is because it doesn't belong there in the first place.

I mean, think about it. Baghdad is a city in an Arabic-speaking country. They spell it in Arabic. When "Baghdad" was translated into English, we had the chance to make up the spelling from scratch. It's basically just a phonetic representation of what the people there call their city. But our English spelling has nothing to do with their Arabic spelling--we don't even have the same alphabet.

So when it was decided how we would spell it in English, why did some goofball have to go drop an unneccessary "h" in there? Did he think "Oooh, it'll look more authentically Middle-Eastern if I throw a superfluous 'h' into the spelling." We could have just as easily spelled it "Bagdad" and not lost anything. No Iraqi would have been screaming "Hey, you forgot to put the 'h' in there!" They don't even know what an "h" is.

Yikes, that was scary. I think I inadvertently started channeling Andy Rooney there for a minute. I apologize for any inconvenience.