Talk:Khiytola

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Finnish names

Many names in the Republic of Karelia are in Finnish, eg. Hiitola, Lahdenpohja, Louhi, Pitkäranta and Suojärvi. In Russian they have been transliterated to "Khiytola", "Lakhdenpokhya", "Loukhi", "Pitkyaranta" and "Suoyarvi".
Although the Finnish towns are Hämeenlinna, Jyväskylä, Äänekoski etc, in Russian Хямеэнлинна, Ювяскюля and Яянекоски, nobody insist that they have to be in English Khyameenlinna, Yuvyaskyulya and Yayanekoski.
--WPK (talk) 15:41, 19 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I fully agree. This is a question of double transliteration, see Talk:Saint Petersburg–Hiitola railroad#Double transliteration!. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 21:28, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Double transliteration is not an issue with Russian geographic names, as every Russian place has an official Russian name (and it makes no difference if it is genuine Russian or was derived from the name in the local language). Those official names is what is used as a basis for transliteration of names for use in the English-language geographic publications. WP:RUS#Place names applies here in full. "Hiitola", of course, is still the spelling that needs to be used in historical context, but the modern usage, as any English map or atlas would attest, is "Khiytola". The names of places in Finland (what seems to be WPK's concern above) would not be affected by any of this—WP:RUS only applies to place names on the territory of modern Russia.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:07, April 14, 2009 (UTC)