Thread: Russian Cirilic names translate into Latin confused

As I said above 'kh' is not russian invention.

Originally Posted by Alex80

As I said above 'kh' is not russian invention.

Sorry, I didnt see you're reaction. Well I guess those are pro American translations MiKhail and NikolaY. I don't understand why Russians would go with that translation if "KH" isn't theirs. They should translate there names etc more like we Serbs or the Bulgarians do. We don't Americanize or what ever you want to call it our names/words when translating from Cyrilic to Latin.

Don't you read that 'kh' and 'h' are different sounds? It is not relevant to americanization. Try to google 'kh sounds'.

Originally Posted by Alex80

Don't you read that 'kh' and 'h' are different sounds? It is not relevant to americanization. Try to google 'kh sounds'.

Ofcourse they are different sounds. But KH isn't the sound beeing made while saying the name. It is pro-americanized no other then the Americans (English speakers) translate Михаил to Mikhail. We Southern Slavs translate it to Mihail
some other western European countries translate it to Michail which is also 10 times better then MiKhail. Just like they translate in America Serbian Surnames like Radonjić to Radonchich or something like this thats BS.

Originally Posted by Mihailo

They should translate there names etc more like we Serbs or the Bulgarians do. We don't Americanize or what ever you want to call it our names/words when translating from Cyrilic to Latin.

I totally agree with you!
The thing is that it probably was not Russians who invented this. Since Russian has no official romanization system, other languages had to invent a way how to transliterate Russian words. Different languages use different systems. French transliteration used to be popular earlier. Now, when English is dominant, English transliteration is used most commonly.