Abu Zaby, Ash Shariqah, Dubayy Calling

Ever been on an American website where you're maybe trying to order something online and when you tell them you're in the UAE you get all these bizarre spellings for the different Emirates? Well, now I know where they come from. FIPS 10-4 is the culprit. It's the US Federal Information Processing Standard. Version 10-4. It lists all geopolitical entities in da world, and gives them a little code.

Unfortunately nobody seems to have told them that the English transliteration of the names of the Emirates have not been spelled the way they think since, like, forever. Remarkably, for an online publication, there doesn't seem to be any way to contact them to get it fixed. And in fact the real FIPS website doesn't even have the full list.

But you can see it here.