Chris Adams writes...

Hi, Greg! Back in 2012, in response to a question about Queen Bee's real name, you asked: "What makes you think her name isn't Bee?"

From what I can tell by poking around with Arabic phonology and Google Translate, it wouldn't make much sense for her personal name to be "Bee" - that sound in Arabic, usually Romanised as "bi", means "my" in English, apparently. I am, of course, assuming that Bialyans on Earth-16 speak Arabic, given the country's geographical location and some of the established placenames.

But of course, she could easily be named something like Nihla, which means "bee". "Malikat Alnnahl" is "Queen Bee" in Arabic, and you can (I think) see where "nihla" becomes "nahl" in that phrase, with the "al" prefix meaning "of" that should be familiar to all of us from Ra's al Ghul, "Demon's Head" or "Head of the Demon", as well as lots and lots of placenames. I assume the extra N comes from how you conjoin syllables in Arabic, but that's purely a guess.

Hopefully you found that interesting. Anyway: without asking you to confirm or deny anything specific, like "Yes, her name is Nihla", would you say it's fair to assume that "Bee" is more of an English *translation* of her personal name, rather than a transliteration of the sound of her personal name into Roman characters?