Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Cyrillic)

This page documents the current usage of names in the Cyrillic script, and transliteration of those names in Wikipedia. This is not a recommendation. Discuss proposed recommendations at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Cyrillic).

Languages covered: Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Mongolian, Montenegrin, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian.

There are many more languages which use the Cyrillic alphabet.

Usage

1. If a name or word has a conventional English spelling, that is used (see #Conventional names, below)
2. In linguistics topics, scholarly transliteration is used
3. Otherwise, the conventional transliteration method for a language is used (see below)
4. Generally, Cyrillic is provided only where transliteration alone cannot convey the original spelling. Since many of the conventional systems are non-deterministic, this means that very often both the Cyrillic and transliteration are provided in a word's first occurrence in an article.

When no commonly accepted form exists in English

Belarusian

For Belarusian:

1. The BGN/PCGN for Belarusian language system (1979) is to be used.
2. The renderings of the Belarusian geographical names in the intra-national Instruction on transliteration of Belarusian geographical names with letters of Latin script may be additionally included, if sufficiently different from the BGN/PCGN version. The suggested form of writing it down, in absence of template would be: ...(BelarusianGeoNameBGNed, IOT2000: BelarusianGeoNameIOT2000ed)...
3. Other systems and orthographies, e.g., ISO 9, GOST 1983 and derivatives, Lacinka are not to be used.

See also Romanization of Belarusian, Łacinka alphabet

Bulgarian

For Bulgarian:

1. The Official Bulgarian method is preferred.

See also #Alphabet, Romanization of Bulgarian

Macedonian

For Macedonian:

1. May be written as the Serbian latin spelling, with
   1. dz for ѕ
   2. kj or ć for ќ
   3. gj or đ for ѓ.

Mongolian

For Mongolian:

1. Mongolian is transliterated using a modified BGN/PCGN system; details at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Mongolian).

Montenegrin

For Montenegrin:

1. Montenegrin Latin spelling is used

Russian

For Russian:

1. Russian is transliterated using a modified version of the BGN/PCGN romanization of Russian; details at Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian.

See also Russian alphabet, Romanization of Russian

Serbian

For Serbian:

1. Serbian Latin spelling is used

See also #Alphabets

Ukrainian

For Ukrainian:

1. Use simplified BGN/PCGN romanization.
2. Official Ukrainian place names are defined by the Ukrainian National system of 1996.

Details at Wikipedia:Romanization of Ukrainian.

See also Ukrainian alphabet, Romanization of Ukrainian, Ukrainian Latin alphabet

Other languages

• Old Church Slavonic: scientific transliteration would be appropriate in articles about this extinct language
• Modern Church Slavonic
• Non-Slavic languages: as for Russian [what about the extra characters].

See also Romanization of Kyrgyz.

Conventional names

When something has a conventional name in English, use that name instead of transliterating. Conventionally-used names may stem from various sources:

• They may be anglicized versions, e.g., Aleksandr→Alexander, Iosif→Joseph, Moskva→Moscow.
• They may be transliterated by a different system, or for another language, e.g., Rossiya→Rossija, Rus→Rus’, Chaykovskiy→Tchaikovsky.
• They may be simplified, more familiar-looking, or easier to pronounce for English-speakers, e.g., Gorbachyov→Gorbachev, Kray→Krai, Khrushchyov→Khruschev, Yuriy→Yuri.
• They may be names borrowed into Russian from a third language, e.g., Petergof→Peterhof.

Formatting references

There is no recommendation about how to cite Cyrillic bibliographic information. Most Cyrillic materials in libraries of the English-speaking world is catalogued in Library of Congress transliteration. If a reference has an ISBN, then it is easy for a reader to look it up.

General info: Wikipedia:Citing sources.

See also

• Romanization
• Transliteration
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)
• ISO 9
• Scientific transliteration, or Scholarly transliteration
• Bosnian
• Cyrillic alphabets, for language-specific Cyrillic alphabets

External links

• Style Sheet for Authors of the Slavic and East European Journal—an example guideline for transliteration, translation, and naming
• Linguistics Style Sheet of Ohio State University Slavic Studies (PDF)—Scientific transliteration for various languages is shown in a table on p. 4.