Thread: Russian Cirilic names translate into Latin confused

Originally Posted by iCake

An average Russian might go with Mihail for Михаил, yes. The thing is an average Russian doesn't really need to do this kind of transliteration on their own. Maybe when buying things off of an international web-store or something, but when it comes to credit cards, visas, international passports etc, the translitiration is done by people who know better These people will put Mikhail in there, I assure you. Why? Simply put, it's a common practice right now, the "rules" for it are all but set now. Then, an average Russian will just copy their Latin written name off of those official documents, bank cards when they need to do this themselves.

Alright but how did they come up with a "K" isn't the Russian pronunciation of Михаил, Miehaieel and not MieKhaaiel. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not trying to say that you are wrong but I'm just saying it doesn't make any sense to me. But I'm already informed with the way they Americanize most last names in America from the former Yugoslavia which is plain wrong to me but whatever.

Originally Posted by Mihailo

Alright but how did they come up with a "K"...

Well, let's examine wiki.
First of all look for "Michael" in english: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael
Well, look at hebrew root:

Mīkhāʼēl, pronounced [miχaˈʔel]

Note, that 'kh' is used to represent this sound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voicel...ular_fricative. We can play audio file and it definitely sounds as russian 'х'.
To make things more complex:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voicel...ttal_fricative
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voicel...geal_fricative
All these 'х' sounds similar to me. But last two seems to be depicted via 'h', opposed to 'kh' of the first one.

So I think russian translators adopted 'kh' of adoption from hebrew.