Spelling rules of a particular language traditionally are not applied to foreign proper names. Cyrillic proper names, however, are transliterated in a confusing variety of ways. For example, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky, Peter Illich Tschaikowsky, Chaikovski, Chaikovsky. Locating a Russian name in an English reference book can require several tries.

Consistent Latin transliterations should exist for all languages. For one group of languages such an alphabet would be a basic system of writing; for other languages (with writing traditions based on non-Latin scripts), it would be an auxiliary alphabet used for the "export" variant of proper names, international telegraphy, e-mail and other similar uses.

This parallel Latin alphabet should be an exact equivalent of the national system of writing, an integral part of the national orthography. It should show by means of the Latin alphabet how a word is originally written. Systems used in China, Japan, Israel and some other countries are good examples of how to solve this problem.

The Terminological Commission of Natural Sciences (Terminologhichna komisija z pryrodnychykb nauk, or TKPN) of Kyjiv Shevchenko University in Ukraine has worked out a new system of romanization for Ukrainian, Russian and Belorussian Cyrillic characters which would correspond to these international requirements for transliteration:

Transliteration should be international and neutral (that is, it should not be based upon the alphabet of any particular language).

Transliteration should guarantee the inverted transliteration back into the national system of writing without any ambiguity.

Transliteration should be uniform for all purposes and for all the recipient languages (at least within the European area).

Transliteration should also be suitable for automatic computer conversion of the national system of writing into Latin characters and vice versa.

The system used by the US Library of Congress cannot be a universal standard for Cyrillic characters, principally because it is ambiguous and does not guarantee the restoration of the original spelling.

The TKPN considered the drawbacks of both the "Slavonic" transliteration (based upon West Slavic spelling) and systems based upon the English alphabet and spelling rules. They tried to

avoid diacritical marks, so that Ukrainian or Russian text could be easily set with any type of Latin keyboard and with any common font, and tried to make the system absolutely synonymous, so that each Cyrillic character has its Latin equivalent.

The authors also tried to avoid the independent use of the letter h: in this system it is an integral part of ligatures (sh, ch). The character Щ is romanized as shh because the letter sh is actually the letter s with a "diacritical mark" in the shape of the auxiliary letter h, therefore the letter shh is the letter sh with the same "diacritical mark."

As for Ukrainian, where the pharyngeal consonant is traditionally romanized as h, the ligature gh for this sound was the subject of great discussion. A proposal to romanize the Ukrainian letter г as h, but x as x is still being discussed. The apostrophe is preserved as in the original spelling (burjak, but bur’jan). It also serves to differentiate ligatures from simple combinations of letters (ja vs.j'a, zh vs. z'h and so on).

Importantly, this system is adapted for automatic computer conversion of the Cyrillic characters into their Latin equivalents and back into the original spelling without any ambiguity. The TKPN created special software for this purpose — adapted to Windows, MS DOS and Macintosh — which is already widely used in many institutions in Ukraine. An automatic conversion is also possible as a macro for Microsoft Word in all versions.

This system could be used first of all for Ukrainian or Russian passports and other internationally recognized documents. People in the West would then perceive the Latin spelling first of all as Ukrainian or Russian rather than English or French.

Opponents of this system, such as The Institute of Ukrainian Language of the

National Academy of Sciences, declare that Ukrainians should be concerned with whether people in other countries read Ukrainian names "properly." In 1996 they established a transliteration system based on the English language (see http://www.rada.kiev.ua /translit.htm), which is not applied to other (that is, European) languages. However, we believe a better transliteration system should be language neutral.

People everywhere, especially Europeans, try to preserve the original spelling of proper names. So it's time for East Slavonic peoples to throw off the foreign masks. We should show our real faces as other peoples do.