In yesterday's 7-by- many game the 'keyword' was peafowl. It provided another example of variant spellings of an Arabic word. (Remember kebab / kabob a week or so ago?)
felafel (which my semi-literate spell-checker has just redlined) scored 59 hits (from 297) and was awarded 'common'.
falafel (an alternative spelling, which my spell-check has also redlined, suggesting I might mean 'fella'), got 97 hits and was given 'rare'.
A glance at Google Ngram viewer would suggest that falafel is the more common of the two by some way in both British and American English.
Certainly during my time in the Middle East falafel seemed to be the 'accepted' transliteration.
Would a 'swapover' be in order for these two words?