Pravdateam/Proper Names

This section of the Style Guide contains guidelines for translating proper nouns.

General notes
Proper nouns are very tricky and important. Search engine indexes our translations and if the proper name is misspelled, the user seeking information which includes this proper name will not see your translation in his search results. This means your translation will not reach the person to whom it was address.

Please pay the MAXIMUM of our attention to checking the spelling of the proper nouns or adjectives deriving our of these nouns.

The Guide covers only some issues which may arise while translating proper nouns. Always use Wikipedia and Google to verify the correctness of our variant. Currently the transliteration rules for Ukrainian proper nouns are messy and sometimes contradict each other. So if you still have doubts after the verification, use our community blog to ask your peers for advice.

Last Names
Names that end in the suffix -ський (Ukrainian) or -ский (Russian) should be transliterated as "-skiy".

Examples

Akhmetov, Bezsmertniy, Bohatyrova, Chernomyrdin, Chernovetskiy, Chornovil, Gongadze, Holovaty, Hrushevskiy, Kipiani, Klitschko (an exception due to his wide name recognition in the West), Kostenko, Kuchma, Lukashenka (NOT Lukashenko), Lutsenko, Lytvyn, Medvedchuk, Melnychenko, Moroz, Omelchenko, Poroshenko, Putin, Rybachuk, Shevchenko, Tarasyuk, Tomenko, Tymoshenko, Yanukovych, Yekhanurov, Yushchenko, Zinchenko, Zvarych.

First Names
Only Ukrainian variants of spelling are given below. Please use the Russian variant for people with Russian origin.

Vladimir Putin shall be used instead of Volodymyr Putin Alyaksandr Lukashenka shall be used instead of Oleksandr Lukashenko (see Lukashenka for more details)

Please DO NOT use westernized name spellings instead of Slavic.

Oleskandr Moroz shall be used instead of Alexander Moroz Evhen Kushnaryov shall be used instead of Eugene Kushnaryov

Examples

Anatoliy, Andriy, Bohdan, Borys, Evhen, Heorhiy (BUT Georgiy Gongadze, because Gongadze himself used this spelling), Hryhoriy, Leonid, Kateryna, Maria, Markian, Mykhailo, Mykola, Oleh, Oleksandr, Olena, Olha, Pavlo, Petro, Raisa, Rinat, Roman, Ruslan, Ruslana, Serhiy, Svitlana, Taras, Vakhtang, Vasyl, Viktor, Vitaliy, Volodymyr, Vyacheslav, Yaroslav, Yevhen, Yulia, Yuriy

Titles
Titles shall be only capitalized when followed by the surname of the person holding that office

President of Ukraine Victor Yushchenko or Interior Minister Lutsenko

Titles can be full and brief. A good example of the difference between the full and the brief titles is the Minister for the Foreign Affairs and the Foreign Minister. Please use the full titles when the emphasis is made on position and brief titles when emphasis is made on person.

The President had now lost control over the appointment of the Minister of Interior President Yushchenko accepted the resignation of the Foreign Minister Tarasiuk

Some brief and full titles

to be added.

Geographical Names
Please use Wikipedia to verify geographical names.

Countries and Nationalities
Please use Wikipedia to verify countries and nationalities.

Tricky examples

Belarus (NOT Belarussia) BUT Belarusian, Belarusians

United Kingdom BUT British

United States (also United States of America) BUT American, Americans

Institutions and Proper Names
Examples

Central Election Commission Dzerkalo Tyzhnia Finance Ministry Interpipe Kryvorizhstal Law on the Cabinet of Ministers Maidan Ministry of Defense Ministry of Justice National Security and Defense Council Orange Revolution Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) Parliament (Verkhovna Rada should be included in parenthesis on first reference) System Capital Management Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) Ukrayinska Pravda

Political Parties
Initials should be included in parentheses on first reference, and can be used by themselves on the second reference.

Examples

Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) Our Ukraine People’s Union (NSNU) (use “the” when alone; do not use “the” when followed by “party”) Party of Regions (PR) Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (PPPU) People’s Movement of Ukraine (Rukh) Pora Reforms and Order Party (PRP) Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united) (SDPU(o)) Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU) (can be abbreviated to Socialist Party on second reference) Ukrainian People’s Party (UNP) Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT)