Oman and Muscat in other languages: names, flag and 11 governorates

From Omana to ʿUmān: the name and its spellings

The name Oman is old. Its earliest known written form is on a tomb at the Mleiha archaeological site in the United Arab Emirates, dated to around 220 BC, in Ancient South Arabian and in Aramaic letters. Pliny the Elder wrote Omana and Ptolemy Omanon. Arabic tradition derives the word from a root for settled people, as opposed to the nomadic Bedouin; other accounts name an eponymous founder or a valley near Maʾrib in Yemen. Sumerian and Mesopotamian sources called the land Magan, Persian ones Mazun.

In Arabic the name begins with the consonant ʿayn, which most European languages cannot write and simply drop: Oman, Omán, Omã. A few spellings keep a trace of it. Somali writes Cumaan, using c for ʿayn, Avar Гӏуман, and Berber ⵄⵓⵎⴰⵏ with a dedicated Tifinagh letter. Turkish Umman and Uzbek or Tajik Ummon follow the Arabic vowel u, while Hebrew has three spellings, עמן, עומן and עומאן.

Muscat shows a second pattern. The Arabic مسقط, Masqaṭ, reached Portuguese as Mascate, and that form passed into French and Spanish. German, Polish and Turkish write Maskat, Swedish and Indonesian Muskat, and Russian Маскат. English kept Muscat, which Irish and Malay also use.

From regions to governorates

The first level of Oman has changed three times since 2003. At that time there were five regions (منطقة, minṭaqâ) and three governorates: Muscat, Dhofar and Musandam. In 2006 Al Buraimi was separated from the Adh Dhahirah region and became a fourth governorate, and ʿIbrī replaced al-Buraymī as the seat of Adh Dhahirah. On 28 October 2011 the distinction ended: every unit became a governorate, Al Batinah was divided at Sohar and Rustaq, and Ash Sharqiyah at Ibra and Sur.

ISO 3166-2 followed in two steps. Newsletter II-2 of 30 June 2010 added OM-BU and replaced OM-JA, the old code of the southern governorate al-Janūbīyah, with OM-ZU for Dhofar. On 27 November 2015 the Online Browsing Platform recorded the 2011 reform. OM-BA and OM-SH were withdrawn, their territory going to OM-BJ and OM-SJ for the southern halves and to the new codes OM-BS and OM-SS for the northern ones.

Flag of Oman

Three horizontal bands of white, red and green are crossed by a red vertical band at the hoist, one third of the flag's length, and the national emblem sits in its upper part. The Wikimedia Commons drawing uses a field of 1050 by 600 units, a proportion of 4:7, with the red band 350 units wide. The flag on this page reproduces that geometry and leaves the emblem out.