Last night I happened to have a documentary on in the background regarding the Arab representation in western media and popular culture. To be honest I wasn’t paying a huge amount of attention as I was doing other stuff at the same time but the actor who played Dr. Bashir came on screen and it reminded me of something I never quite got.
When Deep Space Nine came out the actor credited as Dr Bashir was Siddig El Fadil but in the third or fourth season he had changed his name to Alexander Siddig and I always wondered why but never found out.
Until last night of course.
Thanks to the power of the interwebz I got the answer that I didn’t even really know that I was looking for:
…he changed his professional name to “Alexander Siddig” because (as reported by him at Star Trek conventions) nobody could pronounce “El Fadil”. source
I guess I find that a shame that he felt he had to change his name but then again apparently I keep messing Arjan’s name up whenever I go to say it so perhaps he should take Siddig’s lead and consider changing his name to Arthur to accommodate me (I am very much joking).
I did find out as well that Siddig El Fadil wasn’t even his full name to begin with, according to wikipedia it is actually “Siddig El Tahir El Fadil El Siddig Abderrahman Mohammed Ahmed Abdel Karim El Mahdi”.
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8 Responses to “Why Dr. Bashir changed his name”
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“Siddig El Tahir El Fadil El Siddig Abderrahman Mohammed Ahmed Abdel Karim El Mahdi”
Seriously? Can you imagine the credits screen for him if he hadn’t shortened it originally? You wouldn’t be able to see the station…
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I guess that it would be commendable for them to use his proper name but you’re right it would be one hell of credit screen and would be fun at conventions!
I’m curious what his autograph looks like…
(even though I did quite shortly in the other post about TMNT 2 
)
And no of course I’m not going to change my name
I will accomodate the world so far as to getting my mic problem fixed as soon as possible and scare you with how you shóuld pronounce my name haha.
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I never even thought about the autograph situation, I wonder if the the Siddig El Fadil autograph is worth more than an Alexander Siddig one?
How sad that society is so Anglicised that someone has to change their name ( and lose part of their identity) to fit in.
And, yeah, on his actual name I’d love to see him autograph that! lol
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That’s why I thought it a shame that he felt compelled to change his name. I don’t know very much about Arab culture but I wonder if there is a proper abbreviation, the same way that we rarely use our middle names in signatures etc?
That’s the way Hollywood is… I think things are actually a lot better than they used to be for this kind of thing (you know… the period from the 1920′s-60′s).
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That’s certainly the hope, the documentary was of course using 24 to illustrate some of its points and I’m happy to note that especially in this last season the show has gone a long way to present Arab characters in a better light.