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Metro 2033's writer is a russian Дми́трий Алексе́евич Глухо́вский, and this person's "English name" is Dmitry Glukhovsky. The Wither's writer is a Polish Andrzej Sapkowski, and his name seems able to be spelled with English alphabets utterly. There is a famous Japanese writer 村上 春樹 and he has a Romanization name as Haruki Murakami.

Now I would like to know what word native-speakers use to define those name owned by non-Anglophones people and transformed from non-English language to English (or like Latin alphabet?). "English name" seems not good because it does not emphasis that the name owner is non-Anglophones people.

I have asked AI, and it suggests Latin alphabet name.

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3 Answers 3

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English isn't the only language that uses the Latin alphabet! So 'English name' is certainly 'not good'. Also, when we transliterate a name into a different alphabet it doesn't become a different name - it's just a different way of representing the sounds.

You can call Dmitry Alexeyevich Glukhovsky his 'name in Roman letters' or 'name transliterated from the Cyrillic alphabet'. There is more than one system of transliteration - the one I used to use as a library cataloguer would have spelled it Dmitri'i. Polish uses the Latin alphabet plus some extra letters with diacritics.

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  • Not all languages using Roman characters transliterate names the same way: it's Fyodor Dostoevsky or Dostoyevsky in the English-speaking world, but Fiodor Dostoïevski in France and Fjodor Dostojewski in Germany, according to Wikipedia and Amazon. Hence "English transliteration" or "German transliteration" may be the most accurate term.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Jul 11 at 11:51
  • Yes - and the traditional English spelling 'Tchaikovsky' acquired the 'T' in imitation of Continental versions, as did the obsolete form 'Tchekhov'. Libraries started spelling it 'Chaikovski'i' for a time, but gave up , presumably because users found it confusing.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Jul 11 at 12:02
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In addition to the other correct answers given, you can use the term "is romanized" or "has undergone romanization".

For example, "村上春樹 is usually romanized as Haruki Murakami, although the order of the given name and surname are reversed in the original Japanese."

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Kate Bunting gives you the verbal form "transliterate" and the noun "transliteration". You could refer to the name in Latin characters as "the English transliteration" -- but if it's transliterated differently in the UK than it is in the US, you might say "the British transliteration" or "the American transliteration".

In the 1970s, Mao Zedong replaced Mao Tse-Tung as the English transliteration of the name.

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  • It's rare to see differences between the UK and US but normal to get different transliterations in other European countries: see Wikipedia.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Jul 11 at 11:54
  • The Anglophone world has not not always been in-sync during times of transition. There are contexts when "the English transliteration" won't do and a modifier is needed. "[In] the 1970s, Western newspapers ... began to use the pinyin system... "Mao Zedong" ... rather than "Mao Tsetung" .... The British [L]ibrary began to use pinyin for bibliographic control. ... U.S. federal agencies except the Library of Congress, followed suit." lib.niu.edu/1999/il9904250.html
    – TimR
    Commented Jul 11 at 12:35
  • @TimR - Yes. We still have '55 Days at Peking' (a film), and Peking duck (a dish), and any number of outlets called 'Peking Chinese Takeaway'.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Jul 11 at 14:01
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    @timchessish The speakers who wouldn't understand transliteration are just as likely not to understand anglicized.
    – TimR
    Commented Jul 12 at 11:43
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    @timchessish Maybe in England, but in the US they might guess it had something to do with fishing.
    – TimR
    Commented Jul 12 at 12:24

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