We used to know the name of Syrian president to be "Beşer Esad". Strangely, TRT has recently turned "Esad" into "Esed"?? What´s going on. Today I was watching TRT, and they were showing the headlines from the Press. They displayed a page where it read "Esad" yet the TRT programmer pronounced it as "Esed". What the f*** is going on here?? Visit internet pages of TRT for the past dates and you can find the name "Esad" there as well.

"Esad" is a name used in Turkish as well. There are many Turks out there with the name "Esad". Now it sounds like someone´s name among us Turks. But that feeling should be taken away. Turn it into "Esed" and voila it´s something unfamiliar to us.

What´s going on really?? And to what purpose?

Here´s an article about the same question in Turkish for those who can read:

http://www.yg.yenicaggazetesi.com.tr/yazargoster.php?haber=19333

Remember the name of that volcano that ruined the air traffic in Europe. Some channels even claimed they render the word most accurately showing a selection of other European channels mispronouncing it.

In every language, there are unique wovels pronounced correctly by the native speakers of that language. For example, for many of our foreign users it is next to impossible to pronounce the wovel "ö", "ı" is difficult and "ü" is a challenge. Some people may think they are rendering these wovels correctly but in fact a native speaker will detect the difference instantly.

There are speech sounds unique to Arabic too. Since Arabic is closer to European languages than Turkish is (because of the Indo-European link) one of their wovels is a bit like the British AE sound. It is neight "e" nor "a" hence the confusion.

TRT has recently opened an Arabic channel. Maybe, their staff wanted to help the guys at the Turkish department which resulted in this non-standard pronunciation.

As for popularity of Esad as a Turkish name, I can´t agree with you, the only Esads I have ever heard of are Hafiz Esad the Syrian President and Küçükesad a district in Ankara. It is an old name which was already rare in its heyday and not much heard of, today.

Well, I will only comment about how popular (or rare depending on how you see it) the name "Esat" (Turkified version of "Esad") is.

You may not know many but I do have run into some.

I made a google search and located this:

ESAT Türkiye´de en çok kullanılan 502. isim (... 500. erkut, 501. erman, 502. esat, 503. esen, 504. esma, ...). Ülkemizde yaklaşık her 2,454 kişiden birinin adı ESAT ve ismin yaygınlık oranı binde 0.41.

ESAT adının yaygınlık oranının Türkiye´nin resmi nüfus sayımı sonuçları ve günlük ortalama nüfus artış hızına orantılarsak ülkemizde 12-08-2011 18:07 itibariyle yaklaşık 30,703 kişinin isminin ESAT olduğu ve ESAT isimli kişi sayısının her yıl ortalama 487 kişi arttığı tahmini yapılabilir.

(Source: http://www.ismididikle.com/isim_721_esat.htm)

Much better than "Tayyip" for example:

TAYYİP Türkiye´de en çok kullanılan 1461. isim (... 1459. sümeyye, 1460. zaim, 1461. tayyip, 1462. temel, 1463. tenzile, ...). Ülkemizde yaklaşık her 14,724 kişiden birinin adı TAYYİP ve ismin yaygınlık oranı binde 0.07.

TAYYİP adının yaygınlık oranının Türkiye´nin resmi nüfus sayımı sonuçları ve günlük ortalama nüfus artış hızına orantılarsak ülkemizde 12-08-2011 18:10 itibariyle yaklaşık 5,242 kişinin isminin TAYYİP olduğu ve TAYYİP isimli kişi sayısının her yıl ortalama 83 kişi arttığı tahmini yapılabilir.