Name
There is no universally accepted standard for transliterating Arabic words and Arabic names into English;[7] bin Laden's name was most frequently rendered "Osama bin Laden". The FBI and CIA, as well as other U.S. governmental agencies, have used either "Usama bin Laden" or "Usama bin Ladin", both of which may be abbreviated as "UBL". Less common renderings include "Ussamah Bin Ladin" and "Oussama Ben Laden" in the French-language media. Other spellings include "Binladen" or, as used by his family in the West, "Binladin". The spellings with o and e come from a Persian-influenced pronunciation also used in Afghanistan, where bin Laden spent many years.
The Arabic linguistic convention would be to refer to him as "Osama" or "Osama bin Laden", not "bin Laden" alone, as "bin Laden" is a patronymic, not a surname in the Western manner. In its expanded form, it means "Osama, son of Mohammed, son of Awad, son of Laden". According to bin Laden's son Omar bin Laden, the family's hereditary surname is "al-Qahtani" (Arabic: القحطاني, āl-Qaḥṭānī), but bin Laden's father Mohammed bin Laden never officially registered the name.[8]
Osama bin Laden's admirers have referred to him by several aliases and nicknames, including the "Emir" (al-Amīr), the "Sheik" (aš-Šayḫ), "Abū 'Abd Allāh", "Sheik al-Mujahid" (Šayḫ al-Muǧāhid), the "Lion" or "Lion Sheik",[9] and the "Director".[10]