Qatar (Arabic:
قطر
), officially the State of Qatar (Arabic:
دولة قطر
transliterated as Dawlat Qatar), is an Arab emirate
in Southwest Asia, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the
northeasterly coast of the larger Arabian Peninsula. It is
bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south; otherwise the Persian Gulf
surrounds the state.
The name "Qatar" may derive from the same
Arabic root as qatura which means "to exude." The word Qatura
traces to the Arabic qatran meaning "tar" or "resin", which
relates to the country's rich resources in petroleum and natural
gas.
Other sources say the name may derive from "Qatara", believed to
refer to the Qatari town of Zubara, an important trading port
and town in the region in ancient times. The word "Qatara" first
appeared on Ptolemy's map of the Arabian Peninsula. An
approximation of the native pronunciation is close to kuh-TAHR,
with a regional variant of Arabic dialect dropping the initial
hard k for the pronunciation uh-TAHR. In no form of Arabic is
the name of the nation pronounced anything remotely like the
English words gutter or cutter.
In English-language broadcast media within Qatar, for example
television commercials for Qatar Airways and advertisements
concerning economic development in Qatar, the name is pronounced
"KA-tar", with a distinct differentiation between the syllables
from the forming of the 't' sound.
