My Lebanese friend has always referred to the ground meat mixture on a skewer in a sausage shape as kofte/a (he prmounces it KEFta), which is why I do. I guess if he’d ever made meatballs for me, I’d know if he called them the same thing. 
For Italians, anything cooked on a skewer gets the tag spiedini – so you need to specify whether it is chicken, fish, vegetable or beef, etc. Kebab or gyros pita is also available in Italy, but then it refers to Balkan, Middle Eastern and East Asian preparations of meat on skewers, small or large skewers.
A whole/half chicken or large cut of meat cooked while turned on a spit is allo spiedo in Italian, so the rough translation of spiedini is a “small spit”.
Ha StoneSoup! Maybe you should ask him if he ever uses it in soup (hint, hint).
Yes, that’s generally how it’s pronounced. Certainly the Turkish word is pronounced that way and spelled with an “o” with an umlaut over it to denote that “er” sound.
In three decades, never have known him to make soup, actually. Maybe that’s why I’ve only seen it as skewers.
I used to mainly call them kebabs, but I realize I tend to associate kebabs with a certain shape (i.e., chunked). If it’s a Chinese or Japanese style skewer, I tend to use the native term. If I don’t know the local name, I call it “xx on-a-stick” or just plain skewers.
There aren’t regional differences in spelling that I know of - only regional differences of spelling abilities. 
In all seriousness, spelling - should be no. But vernacular, yes.
Kebab, kabob, kefta and kofta are going to have different means depending on the region.
In Indian cooking, meat cooked on a skewer is a kebab, even if it’s not served on the skewer.
A kofta is a dumpling/ball of something – meat, potato, paneer, etc – usually fried and served with a dipping sauce or in a gravy/sauce.
Until I was going on 20, they were called “hot dogs” 
Then I started running into people who did kabobs, kebobs or kebabs – whatEVer! – at cookouts and informal parties, usually chunks of marinated beef or pork, plus the inevitable chunks of tomato, onion and mushrooms burnt to a crisp. At some point down the road I took up with a woman whose father was in charge of the meat for his Armenian Association’s annual party. He explained to me how he and his helpers would reduce several legs of lamb to 1 1/2" cubes, then put them into a marinade of = parts olive oil and lemon juice, plus herbs, and let that sit overnight before making up the kebabs. The meat thus prepared was essentially “cooked” (like ceviche), and so the skewers stayed on the fire only until the vegetables were done. I know, this is more information than was asked for, but when you know a trick like that …
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Souvlaki. Diminutive of souvla.
Hmm. My experience has been that the non-meat on the skewers take far longer to cook than the meat. I’ve read and heeded advice to put them on separate skewers.
That’s interesting. I read one of the midcentury canonical cookbooks – Beard’s or someone else like that – in which the author refused to recommend kebabs of mixed veggies and meat because the onion and tomatoes were burned and/or falling off the skewers before the meat had begun to cook, and at the time I agreed because that had always been my experience … although I had no deep hatred for overcooked vegetables. It was not long after that when my partner told me of her dad’s strategy. I tried it and it worked. Do we inhabit parallel universes? Or do gas grills maybe cook meat faster or veggies slower? My first attempt were on a hibachi.
shashlik. From a very long ago recipe I had.
“Chislic” in Czech.
