MINELRES: A comment on surnames (Minority issues, No. 54)

[MINELRES moderator]

Original sender: J.M.Palacios <jmpc-l@terra.es>


I fully understand the relation between personal (and collective)
identity and the spelling of non-Latvian names in the official
documents. In most Western countries, it is not exceptional that people
with foreign surnames change the spelling to make easier the
pronounciation by the local population (the German Scheider has
sometimes transformed itself into "Snyder" (US, Canada), or Esn�ider
(Argentina)), but it has been usually done by the will of the people
affected, never against their desires. In most cases, the newly arrived
have kept the original spelling.

One particular problem in the case of Eastern Slavs in Latvia is that
the Russian language uses only the Cyrillic script and, thus, every
Russia/Ukr/Bel. speaker has, probably, found his name written with Latin
characters in many different ways. It is difficult to defend that one of
this Latin unofficial transcription of the Eastern Slavic names reflects
more the identity of the person that the official Latvian form.

One possible solution would be to develop a "latinica" for the Russian
language, using the "baltic encoding". It is very similar to the Central
European and it allows to use the same ortographic conventions of the
Czech, Slovak or Southern Slavic language, very useful for the
transliteration of the Russian. It could then be argued that a concrete
Latin form of the Russian names is precisely "THE" form that reflects
your personal and national identity.

Otherwise, the existence of a Latin standard for the transcription of
the Russian language could also be useful in Russia itself. You have the
case of Serbia, where the possibility of using the "latinica" (very
practical for purposes of international exchanges) has not affected
negatively the knowledge of the "cirilica", more directly related to the
national identity, which is still predominant in the press, literature
and political manifestations.

Best regards,

Dr. JM Palacios