Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian/Harmonization

This page should evolve into a list of common Russian geographical and personal names, so that the standard policy on conventional naming could be evolved. It would eventually be incorporated into Transliteration of Russian into English or given a separate article if deemed appropriate.

Personal names
The origin of most modern given Russian names lies in Calendar of Saints that mentions various names from Biblical sources, translated/transcribed/transliterated and adopted from Greek, Latin and Hebrew, on a daily basis. These names were forced into use over Old Slavonic (mostly with slav ending which means Slava, glory, and mysl ending for thought) and Varangian names by the Russian Orthodox Church somewhere around the rule of Tsar Ioann IV; the priests would not allow any name not in the Calendar to be registered. Thus, the real Slavic names were treated as pagan and are really rare since then. These names were not reused until the historical works of the 1800s that re-introduced them to the public.

Most Russians did not have any other name than given name; they were usually known as Pashka, son of Ivashka; the ka suffix meant the low social status. Only the noble people were addressed to by applying the patronymic form, and only the noble ones were using surnames – usually, boyars who were named after their udel. In the late 1700s, the ordinary people were given some artificial surnames that reflected the place of their birth, their profession, appearance, social status etc. But creating surnames after the Calendar was not an uncommon practice as well. Even some rarely used names and/or adaptations were used and they survived in family names.

Here's a list of most common modern (1800s) and older notable Russian given names. Since most of the current names are of foreign origin, names that have a common English spelling which sounds similar to the Russian are sometimes anglicized.

Masculine
Russian middle names are patronymics (son of) which were originally used as families. Every person had name of his father (or some other male name) applied to his given name, usually constructed by adding ov or yev. When the current families were created, they became indistinguishable from patronymics (old: Nikolay Nikolayev); to distinguish them, a suffix is applied to what was an original patronymic, usually ich in masculine form and na in feminine form (modern: Nikolay Nikolayevich). This creates even more controversy because in old patronymics (and most modern family names) the accent was on the same syllable as the name, but in modern use the accents often separated. Note that many Slavic families are also ending with ich (or Ç, Č, Ĉ).

Foreign surnames
Surnames and names of foreign origin should basically follow Romanization rules for their respective languages. Adding Russian version is advised if doesn't follow standard practices for Romanizing or the person specifically chose to adopt a similar Russian surnname and/or name and patronymic combination (a practice common in XVI-XX centuries).

Proposals
Based on case-by-case review of common Russian and borrowed, names, in addition to the rules defined Transliteration of Russian into English, the following guidelines are proposed in order to maintain phonetic English spelling:


 * If a name is borrowed from ancient Greek, Latin or Hebrew, the transliteration should avoid unnecessary complications and take into account its rendition in English if it sounds alike to the Russian one spelling and does not create any confusion – e.g. Maria, Tatiana, Sophia, Maxim, Alexander, Lidia, Xenia, Feodor, Simeon etc. A specific list should be provided in the article.
 * Reasons: Many borrowed names were originally written using exact transliterations, but they were simplified through the everyday use by adopting conventions of Slavic languages, and by numerous Reforms of Russian orthography. These alterations are commonly accepted today; however, they are mostly about writing but the spelling stays very close to original adaptations of 16th century. Because these differences in spelling are often impossible to perceive in English writing, the originals should be preserved if possible. This does not apply to names that were significantly changed in both spelling and writing.


 * The name borrowed from modern Latin-based languages should be written the way it's written in this particular language – e.g. Harry, Angela, Paulina, Jeanne, Roland, Victor, Victoria etc. The same applies to foreigners whose names were customarily adopted into their Russian equivalents (most of them are not problematic though – e.g. Adam,Robert, Albert, Adolf,  Karl). A specific list should be provided in the article.
 * Reasons: obvious.


 * Soft sign should be replaced with i in front of the vowels, and ignored in any other place.
 * Reasons: Many soft-sign modifications of Western names are now considered folk as opposed to official which use И (Ма́рья vs Мари́я, Со́фья vs Софи́я ; И́лия vs Илья́ is the exception). Trying to universally substitute J or Y gives results inconsistent with English spelling.


 * Hard sign should be ignored at the end of words. In the middle it could be customarily replaces with hyphen or apostrophe if necessary.
 * Reasons: there's no other simple ways to indicate palatalization in English.


 * Short I (Й) at the end of the words (ей, ай, яй, уй, ой, юй, эй) should be transliterated with 'i, with the only exception of ий/ый when both vowels are represented with single i or y when it's common.
 * Reasons: The use of Y at the end of words contradicts many common English spellings, especially ей and эй which are to be transliterated with ey which is assumed to be long i in many end-of-word cases, and ay (ай) would often be incorrectly spelled as in way.


 * In a special case of ИЯ, the Y in ya should be dropped both in the middle and at the end of words.
 * Reasons: IA is unlikely to be confused with ИА, ИЯ or ЬА because these combinations are unconventional in modern Russian due to various simplifications, but IA is very conventional in English transliterations of Hebrew names.


 * In a special case of ЬИ (Ильич), the soft sign should be indicated with Y instead of I
 * Reasons: Conventional and unlikely to be confused with something else.