Libyan scholar Amalie Elfallah recently wrote a really interesting travel report on her 2025 Society of Architectural Historians fellowship, entitled ‘Ghibli,’ a Libyan ‘Desert Wind,’ Lost in Translation Among Stone, Steel, and Speed.

In Libya, ‘ghibli’ (غبلي) is known as a “sandstorm” or a “desert wind blowing from the south.” Across some parts of the Sahara, ‘ghibli’ also refers to the “wind coming from Mecca,” deriving from the classical Arabic word ‘qibla’ (قبلة), meaning “direction.” By the late 1930s, ‘ghibli’ was Latinized—rather, Italianized—when the name was affixed to a military aircraft engineered by Gianni Caproni. The Caproni ‘Ca. 309‘ Ghibli, according to Italy’s aeronautical military archives, was a “reconnaissance and liaison” aircraft utilized in Italy’s “North African colonies.” A word once referring to a natural atmospheric phenomenon was appropriated and attached to an instrument of war, transforming wind into steel and returning its name as a weaponized gust. Was Studio Ghibli’s title drawn from the wind itself, or from the machine that carried its name?