Re: [HM] Jean Favard

Victor Steinbok (aardvark69@earthlink.net)
Sat, 15 May 1999 02:30:22 -0400

It is most common for Cyrillic versions of Latin-spelled names to
approximate the pronounciation in the original language, not to
transliterate the spelling (as is more common for the reverse
procedure). Here are a few sample Russified names of mathematicians
(I'll leave the original names as an exercise to the reader)--all are
transliterated back into Roman script using the Library of Congress
standard:

Bernsa`i'd
Buke
Godo
Gorner
Puankare

The names that suffer the most are French and Hungarian. English and
German names are a bit more predictable, as long as you know the s/z/sh
and k/c distingtions. Of particular difficulty is figuring out the
antecedent for russian G, since about half the time it comes from G and
the rest are from H (which can also be read as Kx=X in Russian,
depending on the source). Basically, for French names there is little
recourse in recovering original references.

VS-)

Romulo Lins wrote:
>
> Thank you for the refs. Also, I would like to apologise for the Russian
> authors or for the translator of the work I mentioned, who spelled it
> 'Favart'. Is it usual for names originally in the Latin alphabet to be
> 'translated' into a Cyrilic form? And in that case, could it be that
> Favard would become something which could be read as Favart when
> 'translated' back to the Latin alphabet?
>
> Romulo
>
> Liliane Beaulieu wrote:
> >
> > To all concerned about JEAN (not Jacques) FavarD (not FavarT) :