recnadocir said:Great thread- I've often wondered about this myself. I just Google searched both terms, and the winner is...belly dance! By a whopping margin, 16,300,000 entries for belly dance, but only 2,500,000 for bellydance.
I think the Google result is significant, in that it says that by about a 7.5 to 1 margin, people searching for our dance form are entering it as belly dance, which means that is how they perceive the correct spelling.
I just Google searched both terms, and the winner is...belly dance! By a whopping margin, 16,300,000 entries for belly dance, but only 2,500,000 for bellydance.
I think the Google result is significant, in that it says that by about a 7.5 to 1 margin, people searching for our dance form are entering it as belly dance, which means that is how they perceive the correct spelling.
I also think that in web site design, better to use the term "belly dance" , in both metatags and in the headers and text, than to use the term "bellydance."