Osman Yusuf Kenadid (Somali: Cusmaan Yuusuf Keenadiid) was a Somali poet and ruler. In the early 1920s, in response to a national campaign to settle on a standard orthography for the Somali language (which had long lost its ancient script), Kenadid, a leader in the Majeerteen Sultanate of Hobyo in Somalia and nephew of Sultan Yusuf Ali Kenadid, devised a phonetically sophisticated alphabet called Osmanya for representing the sounds of Somali.