Getting selected to be an ambassador to a foreign country isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Qualified candidates are rejected all the time for a myriad of reasons. But when Pakistani diplomat Miangul Akbar Zeb was recently declined accreditation to serve as his country’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, it was for an unusual reason…his name.

Would-be ambassador Zeb

It turns out his name is problematic. In Arabic, “Akbar” means “the biggest.” No problem there, Akbar is a common name in the Muslim community. But “Zeb,” which is a common Urdu name, has a specific meaning in Arabic too: penis, cock, dick. So in Arabic, the good diplomat’s name literally means “the biggest dick.” And that would be a no-no in the very conservative country of Saudi Arabia (see article here).

The Arab Times danced around the reason Zeb wasn’t appointed; inadvertently making the situation sound worse (note: this was translated from the original Arabic and I’m sure this was more eloquent in the original language):

“There was still no statement from the GCC countries on the reason for refusing to accept the appointment (the biggest cock) ambassador to Pakistan, where … Arab Times was not able to know the reason too, but after research and investigation shows that the Pakistani diplomat (the biggest dick) is one of the biggest specialists in the Pak-US economic relations and has held an important post in successive Pakistani governments will be responsible for almost one US-Pakistan Economic Relations.

But les GCC do not want (the biggest cock) and object to the appointment and refused to give his reasons.”

Oh-kay…

This isn’t the first time his name has been an obstacle to Zeb’s career. Pakistan has also submitted him as a candidate to serve as ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, two other Arab countries, where he was also rejected for the same reason—his name means the biggest dick.

If I may take a moment to offer some humble advice to Mr. Zeb on the chance he may be reading this: Brother, I don’t think your country likes you very much. They know your name means “the biggest dick” in Arabic, yet they keep submitting you to these Arab countries. If they were really serious, you’d think after the first rejection, they might have taken you aside and politely suggested changing your name before the next round. But stay hard strong, brother! I know this must be a hard difficult time, but you just have to stay limp loose and not get upset because you’re obviously getting screwed fucked disrespected. And think of it this way–it could be worse. Your name could be Chachi and your government could be submitting you as the ambassador to Korea.