In August of 2009, Washington Capitals goaltender Semyon Varlamov requested a change of the spelling in his first name with the NHL. Semyon’s name is written as “Семён” in Cyrillic, and the letter “ё” equates to the sound “yo” in English. His name had originally been translated and written as “Simeon.”
Varlamov’s request prompted the International Ice Hockey Federation to modify the rules regarding Romanization of Russian-language names. Specifically (italics mine):
Q: So what has been wrong with how the names were transcribed until 2010?
A: Simply, the English transcription didn’t reflect how Russians really pronounce their names. And this is the whole point of transcription – to write Russian names with Roman letters so it comes as close as possible to the original pronunciation.Q: Can you give some examples of that?
A: Take a name like Fyodor. It most places it was “Fedor” which is wrong. The Pittsburgh star Malkin’s first name must be spelled Yevgeni and not “Evgeni” or “Evgeny”. Very few Russian first names start with an “E-sound”. Two examples are Enver and Eduard. The first sound in the original spelling of Malkin’s first name is Cyrillic “E”, which looks like the Roman “E” but is pronounced “Ye”. Thus: Yevgeni.
According to Yahoo’s hockey blog, Puck Daddy, the problem stemmed from Russian passports being “transcribed into how they would be spelled in one of the two ‘working’ languages of the United Nations — French.” Just another reason for people to hate the land of the baguette and striped shirt.
In our world of brand names and SEO, this doesn’t change much for you or Fedor Emelianenko. Despite a dash in his last name, most websites still write out Georges St. Pierre with a period — this site included. But if you want to impress your Russian friends, whip out that “yo” sound and walk the dog.
In related news that has gone mostly unmentioned thus far, big props go out to the UFC for making a concerted effort to pronounce Jose Aldo’s first name correctly. Unlike Spanish, the “j” sound in Portuguese is hard, not soft. If you ever find yourself needing a reminder, just remember that Jose’s on a vacation far away.