Cyrillic Transliteration

Russian is written in Cyrillic, and there are several ways to transliterate its alphabet into English. Since most of my work deals with the USSR of the World War II era, I use a scheme based on transliteration schemes of the 1940s. I translate, not transliterate, common words, while I transliterate names of people and places. Пётр Великий thus becomes Pyotr the Great, not Pyotr Velikiy.

Russian Cyrillic Letter		English Transliteration			Russian Cyrillic Letter		English Transliteration
Upper Case	Lower Case	Upper Case	Lower Case		Upper Case	Lower Case	Upper Case	Lower Case
А	а	A	a		Р	р	R	r
Б	б	B	b		С	с	S	s
В	в	V	v		Т	т	T	t
Г	г	G	g		У	у	U	u
Д	д	D	d		Ф	ф	F	f
Е	е	E	e		Х	х	Kh	kh
Ё	ё	Yo	yo		Ц	ц	Ts	ts
Ж	ж	Zh	zh		Ч	ч	Ch	ch
З	з	Z	z		Ш	ш	Sh	sh
И	и	I	i		Щ	щ	Shch	shch
Й	й	Y	y		Ъ	ъ
К	к	K	k		Ы	ы	Y	y
Л	л	L	l		Ь	ь
М	м	M	m		Э	э	E	e
Н	н	N	n		Ю	ю	Yu	yu
О	о	O	o		Я	я	Ya	ya
П	п	P	p

• I do not transliterate Ъ (the hard sign) and Ь (the soft sign) in this scheme. Other schemes do transliterate them, using the traditional but confusing " for ъ and ’ for ь. These signs have various uses in Russian, one important one is to modify how constants are pronounced from their "normal" pronunciation. The л ("l") in стал and сталь are pronounced differently based on the absence or presence of the soft sign. стал is "has become" while сталь is "steel" (and стал сталь means "became steel"). In my scheme, both transliterate as stal. While this may seem unfortunate, remember that I translate, not transliterate, common words, so you would encounter "became steel", not stal stal.
• This table does not include the four letters that were dropped from the alphabet in a 1918 reform or the other letters dropped in earlier centuries, since it is based on post-1918 transliteration schemes. Since I do deal with Russian sources before 1918, I do transliterate these letters when I need to:
  • І / і was replaced by the already-existing И / и. Transliterated the same as И / и (Latin script I / i).
  • Ѳ / ѳ was replaced by the already-existing Ф / ф. Transliterated the same as Ф / ф, (Latin script F / f).
  • Ѣ / ѣ was replaced by the already-existing Е / е. Transliterated the same as Е / е, (Latin script E / e).
  • Ѵ / ѵ was replaced by the already-existing И / и. Transliterated the same as И / и, (Latin script I / i).
• Technically, when I say "Cyrillic" I mean the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script. A script is a writing system, and the Cyrillic script is used for a number of languages, most of which has their own alphabets, such as Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Mongolian, and so on. What's the difference? While many of the Cyrillic letters in these alphabets are same, some letters are different. Also technically, when I say I transliterate them to "English", I mean the English alphabet of the Latin (aka Roman) script. Yes, I too found the distinction between alphabets and scripts obscure at first but Internet searches can help explain this.
• A Personal Note: When I first saw written Russian, my reaction was like many English speakers and readers, yuck, what a mess. Once I learned the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, however, I found some interesting things. First, Russian letters turned out to be a bit less intimidating than they first appeared, since many are based on Greek letters, which frequently show up in English in mathematical and scientific works. Second, I came to appreciate some features of Cyrillic: ч (for ch) and ш (for sh) are nice, compact ways to represent single sounds that require two letters in English (digraphs). The English alphabet could use this (although the Cyrillic letters themselves are too similar the English letters y and w to be useful). Expanding this thought beyond the Russian alphabet, having single English letters for th and ng sounds also makes sense to me (and, yes, I know that "th" actually encompasses two different sounds; another thing you can look up if want). However, as an English speaker, I feel have separate letters for sh (ш) and shch (щ) as Russian does is a bit too much.

There are multiple ways to transliterate Russian Cyrillic into English. You can see this, for example, in some transliterated word endings. For example, Narodnyy, Narodnyi, and Narodny all are different ways to transliterate the same Russian word (Народный, "People"), with the last letter becoming "y" or "i" or just being dropped because of the preceding "y". As I mentioned above, I use a WW2-era style of transliteration I developed in the 1980s. As I recall, one major influence was how the National Geographic Society transliterated the names of Soviet geographical features (cities, rivers, and so on) on the maps they published during World War II. Some modern transliteration systems yield different results. For example, I transliterate Артём as "Artyom" while some modern systems would give "Artem". I prefer "Artyom" as it distinguishes Артём (Artyom) from Артем (Artem).

Some transliteration schemes aspire to two-way transliteration, so that if you transliterate the English back to Cyrillic, you end up with the exact characters of the original Russian word. For example, transliterating Artyom should yield Артём (the "yo" becomes ё), but transliterating Artem would instead mostly likely yield Артем. (You have no way of telling that the English "e" in "Artem" should be Cyrillic ё instead of Cyrillic е. Also, both Артём and Артем are Russian first names, so context doesn’t help here, either.) While two-way transliteration is a nice ideal, it is rather difficult to achieve without using extra symbols. For example, "Artyom" could also be back-transliterated as Артыом (since you can’t tell with certainty that the "yo" is supposed to be a single letter, ё, and transliterating the "y" and "o" as separate letters could instead yield ы and о). I thus forgo two-way transliteration. Which you probably knew earlier, when I said I don't transliterate the soft and hard signs.

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