1.5. Names. Which one is right? I see all these irritating spelling variants in Mongolian
Description
This article is from the Mongolia FAQ, by Oliver Corff with numerous contributions by others.
1.5. Names. Which one is right? I see all these irritating spelling variants in Mongolian
Given the name of the Capital of Mongolia, one can find it written in
several forms: Ulan Bator, Ulaan Baatar, Ulaanbaatar and even
Ulaganbagatur (where the ``g'' sometimes is --- strangely enough! ---
spelled by a Greek gamma).. Which one, then, is the really correct
form?
As with every non-Latin script, there is a problem of rendering this
script into Latin which involves a choice between two methods:
transliteration and transcription. The first method tries to reproduce
the original writing while the second method tries to indicate its
pronounciation. The process is further complicated if another language
and/or script is inserted between the original and the target. Hence,
Ulaanbaatar is the transliteration of the name in Mongolian (using the
Cyrillic alphabet), Ulan Bator is a spelling derived from the Russian
transcription of the name (though Russians and Mongolians use the same
writing system, the Russians preferred to make a transcription of the
Mongolian name rather than accepting it unmodified into Russian),
Ulaan Baatar is the transliterated spelling of the Mongolian words
``Red Hero'' (the literal meaning of the name), and Ulaganbagatur
finally is an approach to transliterate the name from the Classical
Mongolian writing.
The whole methodological problem is explained in detail in the section
on Mongolian and computers towards the very end of this FAQ.
Due to the difficulties of rendering names etc. for postal, news and
other services some more or less ``official'' ways of spelling exist,
in addition to several transliterations and common spellings which are
not correct in the strict sense but enjoy a broad acceptance.
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