Box 56Names in non-roman alphabets (Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Korean) or character-based languages (Chinese, Japanese)

Romanization, a form of transliteration, means using the roman (Latin) alphabet to represent the letters or characters of another alphabet. A good authority for romanization is the ALA-LC Romanization Tables.

  • Romanize names in Cyrillic (Russian, Bulgarian, etc.), Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Korean, or character-based languages, such as Chinese and Japanese
  • Capitalize only the first letter of romanized names if the original initial is represented by more than one letter
    • Iu. A. Iakontov   becomes   Iakontov IuA
  • Georgios Th. Tsakalos   becomes   Tsakalos GTh
    • Ignore diacritics, accents, and special characters in names. This rule ignores some conventions used in non-English languages to simplify rules for English-language publications.
      • Treat letters marked with diacritics or accents as if they are not marked
      • Å   treated as   A
      • Ø   treated as   O
      • Ç   treated as   C
      • Ł   treated as   L
      • à   treated as   a
      • ĝ   treated as   g
      • ñ   treated as   n
      • ü   treated as   u
    • Treat two or more letters printed as a unit (ligated letters) as if they are two letters
      • æ   treated as   ae
      • œ   treated as   oe

From: Chapter 26, Electronic Mail and Discussion Forums

Cover of Citing Medicine
Citing Medicine: The NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers [Internet]. 2nd edition.
Patrias K, author; Wendling D, editor.
Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US); 2007-.

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