Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan)/2006 proposal

Romanisation systems for the Tibetan language can be roughly grouped in three categories:
 * 1. transliterations according to the Tibetan spelling
 * 2. transcriptions based on the pronunciation in a certain dialect (for example in the dialect of Lhasa)
 * 3. mixed forms of these two principles.

There is no agreement yet on Wikipedia about how to spell Tibetan names. This article is meant to start a discussion and contains a preliminary recommendation at the end.

Transliteration according to Tibetan spelling
Tibetan spelling does not simply reflect pronunciation of the modern spoken dialects. It is a pan-dialectal, historical orthography. For the transliteration of written Tibetan, the system of Turrel Wylie has been adopted by most scholars. Whether the "root letters" ought to be capitalized is immaterial, since readers capable of benefitting from the Tibetan text can be expected to discern the root letters by themselves.

The Library of Congress system, whose Romanization scheme is designed to resemble those used for various Indic languages, is also sometimes encountered. Its use by the Library of Congress can be attributed to the numeric superiority of Sanskritists and other Indian specialists, over Tibetologists.

Outside scholarly articles, the Wylie and Library of Congress systems are rarely used, since reading audiences apparently rebel when faced with words like "Sprul Sku" (instead of say, "Tulku").

Transcription according to pronunciation
For practical purposes, there are several systems to represent the pronunciation of Tibetan according to the dialects of Lhasa and other regions. Many of these are championed mainly by their creators. The main difficulties are:


 * The necessity of choosing among dialects and accents.
 * A certain disconnect between the colloquial and literary languages (not everything that is written, would normally be spoken).
 * The problem of rendering Tibetan sounds into a system understandable by non-specialists. (Would "Jigmay Lingba" be preferable to "Jigme Lingpa"?)

Some popular systems attempt to address these issues:


 * The Chinese government has developed a system, Tibetan pinyin. It is modelled to some extent on Hanyu Pinyin, the official system to transcribe Chinese words. This system is officially used for Tibetan place names in China, and has not yet been adopted by English-language writers.


 * Two systems are widely used by Tibetan and Buddhist scholars in the west: The official Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library (THDL) transcription system, and the official transcription system of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives.  These systems also address the above issues, and are more suitable for western and exile-Tibetan readers, as the Latin letters are closer to what most would expect for the corresponding Tibetan sound.


 * Tibetans themselves have developed some loose standards used in the real world of email, chat, writing, etc, but these are so far not documented.

Mixed systems
Very often, mixed forms, based mostly on pronunciation, but also to some extent reflecting traditional Tibetan spellings, e.g. the three series of plosive consonants (voiceless - aspirate - voiced, such as k - kh - g), or differenciating between consonant clusters of the written language that don't have different pronunciations (e.g. br- and dr-).

Some very common transcriptions neither reflect the pronunciation nor the spelling, such as the T- in "Tashilhunpo" (also spelled Tashilumpo, Tashilhünpo, etc.). The name of the monastery is pronounced [ʈʂaɕiɬynpo] in the Lhasa dialect. [t] and [ʈʂ] are two different phonemes in Tibetan, and in many other words [ʈʂ] is often transcribed as tr- (Trashilhunpo). The official Chinese transcription represents this initial as Zh-: Zhaxilhünbo.

Tibetan spellings on Wikipedia
Articles on Tibetan place names in the People's Republic of China (Tibetan Autonomous Region, Qinghai, Gansu, Qinghai etc.) should be named according to the official Chinese spellings, such as given in the Gazetteer of China. The introduction should give the name in Wylie transliteration and - if necessary - in other common English spellings.

There is no agreement yet on how to spell Tibetan personal names. The introduction should contain the name in Wylie transcription, the official Chinese spelling and - if necessary - other common English spellings. If the figure is a writer who has published in Western languages, his or her spelling preferences should be followed (e.g., "Chögyam Trungpa").

The template Bo-zh-box can be used for Tibetan and Chinese terms, see example on the right.