Chanuka, Hanukkah -- why the spelling difference?

Chanuka, Hanukkah--
Why the spelling difference?
And which should I use for listing?
Why is the name of this Jewish holiday sometimes spelled with a "H" and sometimes with a "CH"? The answer is simple: The Hebrew word begins with a gutteral sound that does not exist in English. It's similar to the gutteral in German "Ach," so Jews of Central or Eastern European descent tend to render it with a "CH." Israelis often use this spelling, too. But Americans are not, by and large, familiar with German gutteral sounds. They tend to see "CH" as the softer sound in "church." (I actually heard somebody call the holiday "Cha-noo-kah" as in "Choo-choo"!) So Americans tend to spell it with an "H."
Which should you use for listing items? USE BOTH !!! The item itself may say "Chanuka" or "Hanukkah"on the package, and many people go with that. But if you use only one spelling, and a customer is searching with the other spelling, then he or she will miss your items. Let's try it. First, we will search for Chanuka-- note the items on the top half of thelist. Now we'll search for Hanukkah-- I'll bet a lot of theitems are different from the first search. Those which are the same in both searches haveBOTH spellings. (You can see similarresults in the sample items on the sidebar on this page, too.) So, if you want to reach the maximum number of customers, include both Hanukkah and Chanuka in your title lines!
Further suggestions: In addition to these two most gemon spellings, there are other, less gemon variants: Hanuka, Hanukah, Hannuka, Hannukah Channuka, Chanukka, Channukkah, Chanukkah, etc. Of course you can't fit all these on the subject line, but you might want to include them in the description. Many savvy searchers do an "advanced search" to include keywords in the description. In many cases, the okay search engine will also promptwith "Did you mean...?" and give the more gemon spelling. Last but not least, if you are listing the same kind of item in multiple auctions,you might try including different variants in each auction's subject line.