by Rabbi Jason Miller
The #1 question during Hanukkah is: What is the correct way to spell the name of this holiday? As I blogged about last year, "Since it's a Hebrew word that is transliterated into English, there are several acceptable spellings. But people still want to know if there is a consensus."
Just as there is no consensus as to how to spell the name of the late Libyan leader Gaddafi (or is it Kadhafi or Qaddafi?), there is certainly no consensus on how to spell Hanukkah. What better way to find out what is the most common spelling than to look at Google statistics. On his blog, Joe Maller did just that. He found that there are 16 prevalent variations of the Hanukkah spelling on the Web (which doesn't include the Spanish "Januka"). Here are his conclusions:
Hanukkah : 8,470,000 hits.
Chanukah : 3,390,000 hits.
Hanukah : 862,000 hits.
Hannukah : 677,000 hits.
Chanuka : 335,000 hits.
Chanukkah : 274,000 hits.
Hanuka : 192,000 hits.
Channukah : 128,000 hits.
Chanukka : 116,000 hits.*
Hanukka : 86,300 hits.
Hannuka : 51,400 hits.
Hannukkah : 37,300 hits.
Channuka : 33,600 hits.
Xanuka : 992 hits.
Hannukka : 686 hits.
Channukkah : 508 hits.
Channukka : 489 hits.*
Chanuqa : 25 hits.
With the exception of a few wild cards, there are 16 different spellings, based on four phonetic variations:
The word starts with “H” or “Ch”
Second consonant is “nn” or “n”
Third consonant is “kk” or “k”
The word ends with “ah” or “a”
...*http://www.thejewishweek.com/blogs/jewish_techs/how_do_you_spell_hanukkah
