sun letter

In Arabic, this gemination occurs when the word to which al- is prefixed begins with one of the fourteen sun letters.

In more modern dialects, the sun letters have been extended to include the velars gīm and kāf.

Because the letter s is a sun letter, the letter l of the al- is usually assimilated to it.

Some transliterations ignore assimilation of the definite article al- before the "sun letters", and may be easily misread by non-Arabic speakers.

In Arabic and Maltese philology, the sun letters transcribe coronal consonants.

When followed by a sun letter, the l in al assimilates to the initial consonant of the following noun, resulting in a doubled consonant.

The excitement over the possibility of "seeing at a distance" was promoted even further in a March 1877 New York Sun letter to the editor that said:

The letter a of the al- is unstressed, and can be transliterated by almost any vowel, often by e. Because the letter n is a sun letter, the letter l of the al- is assimilated to it.

Therefore Abdul is not always used as the opening part of the name; if the second part starts with a sun letter, it may become forms including Abdun, Abdur, Abdus, or Abdush, the vowel in each name, similarly with Abdul, is also open to differing transliterations.