UNITED NATIONS GROUP OF EXPERTS ON GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES (UNGEGN)

Working Group on Romanization Systems

Consistent use of accurate place names is an essential element of effective communication worldwide and supports socio-economic development, conservation and national infrastructure. That is why the United Nations established a Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN). UNGEGN promotes consistent use of accurate place names and prepares documents for the United Nations Conferences on the Standardization of Geographical Names that are held every five years. For more information on the activities of UNGEGN see the links below or refer to the UNGEGN brochure.

Working groups are established by UNGEGN to deal with specific tasks, such as training courses in toponymy, toponymic data files and gazetteers, toponymic terminology, country names, publicity and funding, and romanization systems.

Terms of reference

The basic mandate of the Working Group consists of considering and reaching agreement on a romanization system for geographic names proposed by a (donor) country. The process of adoption of such a system by the United Nations involves the following prerequisites:

There needs to be sufficient time for appropriate consultations and an expression of all views on technical matters between the sponsoring country and the working group members. Thus active participation and input of the potential users of the new romanization systems are assured. Specifically, the group considers whether the romanization system is based on sound scientific principles, the system's degree of reversibility, and the extent of its implementation on cartographic products (maps and charts) by the proposing country. Finally, the new system is referred to the next U.N. Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names in form of a resolution which, in turn, is voted by the Conference. When the resolution is adopted, the subject romanization system becomes the United Nations standard.

(G. Quinting, UNGEGN Newsletter No. 17, May 1996)

Report on the Current Status of United Nations Romanization Systems for Geographical Names

See also an important note on links and report versions.

Version 3.0. March 2008

• Contains updates published after the 9th United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names (2007)
• Romanization systems
• Languages/scripts covered by systems recommended by the United Nations:
  Hebrew [2008-05-07 (corr. a): pdf/html]


• Other languages/scripts:
  Byelorussian [2008-04-17: pdf/html] | Tigrinya [2008-04-17: pdf/html]

Version 2.3. December 2006

• Updated version, published in a UN publication: Technical reference manual for the standardization of geographical names (2007; there are updates or changes in the sections for Amharic, Bulgarian, Hebrew, Khmer, Russian; Korean, Lao, Sinhalese, etc.)

Version 2.2. January 2003 [published 2003-02-20]

• Introduction [pdf/html] (includes updates from Version 1.3 to 2.1 and from 2.1 to 2.2)
• List of languages, countries and romanization systems [pdf/html]
• Romanization systems (systems that are revised in Version 3.0 above, are indicated in gray)
  • Languages/scripts covered by systems recommended by the United Nations:
    Amharic [pdf/html] | Arabic [pdf/html] | Assamese [pdf/html] | Bengali [pdf/html] | Bulgarian [pdf/html] | Chinese [pdf/html] | Greek [pdf/html] | Gujarati [pdf/html] | ⇑ Hebrew [pdf/html] | Hindi [pdf/html] | Kannada [pdf/html] | Khmer [pdf/html] | Macedonian Cyrillic [pdf/html] | Malayalam [pdf/html] | Marathi [pdf/html] | Mongolian (in China) [pdf/html] | Nepali [pdf/html] | Oriya [pdf/html] | Persian [pdf/html] | Punjabi [pdf/html] | Russian [pdf/html] | Serbian [pdf/html] | Tamil [pdf/html] | Telugu [pdf/html] | Thai* [pdf/html] | Tibetan [pdf/html] | Uighur [pdf/html] | Urdu [pdf/html]
    * Note: Following comments from the Royal Thai Survey Department in May 2003, this section was updated and published, with two errors corrected, on 5 May, 2004.
  
  
  • Other languages/scripts:
    Armenian [pdf/html] | Burmese [pdf/html] | ⇑ Byelorussian [pdf/html] | Dzongkha [pdf/html] | Georgian [pdf/html] | Japanese [pdf/html] | Kazakh [pdf/html] | Kirghiz [pdf/html] | Korean [pdf/html] | Lao [pdf/html] | Maldivian [pdf/html] | Mongolian (Cyrillic) [pdf/html] | Pashto [pdf/html] | Sinhalese [pdf/html] | Tajik [pdf/html] | ⇑ Tigrinya [pdf/html] | Ukrainian [pdf/html]
  
  
  • Annex. Languages that have recently adopted Roman alphabets:
    Azerbaijani [pdf/html] | Turkmen [pdf/html] | Uzbek [pdf/html]
  
  
  • Note: If you experience difficulties in viewing the non-Roman script pages in HTML format please refer to the appropriate Unicode pages for further assistance.

Version 2.1. June 2002

See technical papers, CRP. 81, published at the UNGEGN website.

Version 1.3. March 2000

Other documents

• 9th United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names (New York, 21–30 August 2007)
  • E/CONF.98/CRP.3: Report of the Working Group on Romanization Systems: Activities from August 2002 to June 2007 (link to UNGEGN website)
  • E/CONF.98/2: Implementation of UN Romanization Systems by Donor Nations (link to UNGEGN website)
    Other documents with information on romanization from the UNGEGN website:
  • E/CONF.98/4: Changes in the Official Romanization System for Hebrew (see also proposal for a resolution) (submitted by Israel)
  • E/CONF.98/47: Toponymic guidelines for map editors and other editors, Japan (third edition, 2007) (submitted by Japan)
  • E/CONF.98/115: Romanisation (submitted by France)
  • E/CONF.98/CRP.21: National System of Geographic Names Transmission into Roman Alphabet in Belarus (submitted by Belarus)
  • E/CONF.98/CRP.29/EN: Standard Arabic System for Transliteration of Geographical Names (submitted by the Third Arab conference on Geographical Names)
  • E/CONF.98/CRP.33: Working Paper on Romanization Font (submitted by Lebanon)
  • E/CONF.98/CRP.43: Romanization of Korean Geographical Names: Current Practices and the Way Forward (submitted by the Republic of Korea)
  • E/CONF.98/CRP.71: Writing systems: Romanization (submitted by Bulgaria)
  • E/CONF.98/CRP.90: Report on the Work for Unifying the "Romanization of Geographical Names of Korea" (submitted by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea)


• 24th Session of UNGEGN (New York, 20 and 31 August 2007)
  • Report by the Convenor of the Working Group on Romanization Systems (link to UNGEGN website)


• Meeting of the Working Group (Tallinn, 9–10 October 2006)
  • Agenda and presented documents
  • Report on the meeting


• 23rd Session of UNGEGN (Vienna, 28 March – 4 April 2006):
  • W.P. 98: Report by the convenor of the working group on romanization systems
    Other documents with information on romanization from the UNGEGN website:
  • W.P. 22: Toponymy of Mongolian geographical names (submitted by Mongolia)
  • W.P. 57: Toponymic Guidelines for Map Editors and other Editors (submitted by Japan)
  • W.P. 62: Transcription Procedure for Iranian Toponymic Items (submitted by the Islamic Republic of Iran)
  • W.P. 95: Romanization of Korean (submitted by the Republic of Korea)


• 22nd Session of UNGEGN (New York, 20–29 April 2004):
  • W.P. 46: Report by the convenor of the working group on romanization systems
  • W.P. 48: Updates to the report on the current status of United Nations romanization systems for geographical names
    Other documents with information on romanization from the UNGEGN website:
  • W.P. 23: The stability and appropriateness of the United Nations system for the romanization of Arabic geographical names (submitted by United Kingdom)
  • W.P. 54: Transcription procedure for Iranian geographical names (submitted by the Islamic Republic of Iran)
  • W.P. 73: Standard Lebanese geographic names romanization rules (submitted by Lebanon)


• 8th United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names (Berlin, 27 August–5 September 2002):
  • E/CONF.94/CRP.80: Report of the working group on romanization systems: activities from January 1998 to May 2002
  • E/CONF.94/CRP.81: Report on the current status of the United Nations romanization systems for geographical names (link to the UNGEGN website, Version 2.1; see above)


• 21st Session of UNGEGN (Berlin, 26 August & 6 September 2002):
  • W.P. 3: Report by the convenor of the working group on romanization systems


• Meeting of the Working Group (London, 16-17 May 2001):
  • Report on the meeting


• 20th Session of UNGEGN (New York, 17-28 January 2000):
  • W.P. 15: Report by the convenor of the working group on romanization systems

• UNGEGN website (Statistics Division, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs)
• UNGEGN Working Group on Exonyms (Milan Orožen Adamič, Slovenia; Peter Jordan, Austria)
• UNGEGN Working Group on Toponymic Data Files and Gazetteers (Randall E. Flynn, United States; Pier-Giorgio Zaccheddu, Germany)
• Toponymy Courses Site (Ferjan Ormeling, Netherlands)

Other links on romanization

• ALA-LC Romanization Tables (scanned tables of the American Library Association and the Library of Congress)
• Arab Gateway: Romanization of Arabic
• BGN/PCGN romanization systems (NGA [BGN] website)
• BGN/PCGN romanization systems (PCGN website)
• ISO TC46/SC2 (technical subcommittee on the conversion of written languages, inactive since May 2000)
• KNAB romanization systems (used in the Place Names Database of EKI)
• Romanization (articles from Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia; includes also information on various languages)
• Transliteration of Georgian Alphabet (Shukia Apridonidze, Levan Chkhaidze)
• Transliteration of Non-Roman Scripts (maintained since Sept. 2002 by Thomas T. Pedersen)
• Transliteration pages on Indic and other scripts (Anthony P Stone)

Composition of the Working Group

The Working Group, as constituted at the 21st Session of UNGEGN held in conjunction with the Eighth Conference (2002), with subsequent changes, is as follows:

Mr. Ass'ad S. Abdo (Saudi Arabia) Mr. Brahim Atoui (Algeria) Mrs. Caroline Burgess (United Kingdom) Mme. Élisabeth Calvarin (France) Ms. Catherine Cheetham (United Kingdom) Mr. Randall E. Flynn (United States) Mr. Charles M. Heyda (United States) Mr. Naftali Kadmon (Israel) Mr. Mehran Maghsoudi (Islamic Republic of Iran) Mr. Peeter Päll (convenor, Estonia) Mr. Walter Petrovitz (Holy See) Mr. Gerd Quinting (United States) Mr. Alessandro Toniolo (Italy) Mr. Peter D. Viechnicki (United States) Mr. Paul J. Woodman (United Kingdom) Mr. Bogusław R. Zagórski (Poland)

The Working Group can be contacted at the address of the convenor:

Peeter Päll Institute of Estonian Language Roosikrantsi 6 10119 Tallinn Estonia Fax: +372-6177500 E-mail: peeter@eki.ee

Notes on errors and any information on new developments in various countries are welcome. Please note that the Working Group has no mandate to review any other systems except those being submitted by the relevant authorities and experts of the donor countries within the framework of the United Nations activities in the standardization of geographical names.

Opened: 2000-04-14
Updated: 2008-04-17