Name Transliterator for Turkic Languages

What the tool does and who it is for

The transliterator offers 8 directions for Uyghur, Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Kazakh and Kyrgyz. You choose a language and a direction, type one name per line and read the result. It is meant for parents who found a name in a script they cannot read, for people filling in a form that asks for a Latin spelling, for family historians comparing documents from different decades, and for anyone who wants to see how the same name looks in another alphabet.

It is not a translation tool and it is not a spelling authority. It does not look up what a name means; for that, open the name page. It also does not decide which spelling is correct for a passport, a school record or a birth certificate. Those decisions belong to the registry or office that issues the document.

How to use it, step by step

1. Pick the language and direction in the first field. Directions are grouped by language, for example Uzbek Latin to Cyrillic.
2. Type or paste the name in the text box, one name or one full name per line, up to ten lines. For example, try Adalet, Mətin and İshak with the matching language.
3. Read the middle column for the rule-based result. Letters that the table does not cover are left unchanged and listed under the result.
4. Read the right column. If the name exists in our database in that language, the stored spelling in the target script appears with a link to the full name page. Prefer that spelling over the rule-based one when they differ.
5. Without JavaScript, press Transliterate: the page reloads with the result in the same layout.

How it works, honestly

Each direction is a table of letters and letter groups, applied from left to right with the longest match first. In Uyghur Latin, sh, ch, zh, gh and ng are single letters, so they are matched before s, c, z, g and n. Capital letters are kept: a name that starts with a capital letter in the input starts with a capital letter in the output.

A few rules depend on context. In Uyghur, the hamza carrier is silent at the start of a word and becomes an apostrophe between two vowels; in Uzbek, Latin e at the start of a word becomes Cyrillic э and elsewhere е; Cyrillic е becomes ye at the start of a word or after a vowel. These rules are written out in the scheme note above the result for the direction you chose.

Azerbaijani is the cleanest case, because the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets map letter to letter. Kazakh and Kyrgyz are different: they are written in Cyrillic officially, and no official Latin alphabet is in force that we could implement faithfully. For these two the tool offers a simplified romanization of our own, built on common BGN/PCGN-style choices. It goes one way only, from Cyrillic to Latin, and it loses some distinctions, for example between ұ and у.

What the tool cannot do

• Transliteration changes the writing system, not the meaning. A name does not gain or lose a meaning by being written in another alphabet.
• It does not establish a correct or historical spelling. A family may use a spelling that differs from the table, and an older document may use a different convention altogether.
• It cannot know a name's pronunciation in a given region, or whether a word is a loan from Russian, Arabic or Persian that follows its own spelling rules.
• Reverse conversion is not always possible. When one script writes two sounds with one letter, going back can produce a different spelling from the one you started with.
• Official documents in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan or China follow their own transliteration standards, which may differ from these tables.

Practical tips for parents

If you plan to give a name that will be written in more than one script, decide on a primary spelling early and use it everywhere: on the birth certificate, with the health insurer and at the nursery. Different spellings of the same name in different records are a common source of paperwork problems for families who move between countries.

Check the letters your country's registry accepts before you fall in love with a spelling. Some registries accept only the letters of their own alphabet, so a name with ä, ö or ü may need an alternative form on paper. The name pages list variant spellings that people use in practice.

When you copy a name from a family document into a form, enter it the way it was written on the original document and add the transliteration separately, rather than converting it silently. If the result looks unusual, compare it with the stored form and with the variant list on the name page before you decide.

Questions and answers