Quote Originally Posted by bitpicker View Post
The problem here is that Russian does not have the phoneme we represent with "H" in "Hamlet" and elsewhere. It is frequently represented as г and even pronounced like that, I've heard Russians pronounce the name of the city Hamburg like Gamburg for example.
"H" was traditionally transliterated as "Г".

There is a tendency toward a phonetical transliteration now. For example, Irish physicist William Hamilton is known as Гамильтон in Russia. On the other hand, the name of British driver Lewis Hamilton is transliterated and pronounced as Хэмилтон. Nevertheless, if you see the letter "г" in a name you should pronounce "г". There is no exceptions, afaik.


BTW. Ломоносов, Ода: "...Что может собственных Платонов И быстрых разумом Невтонов Российская земля рождать."