Talk:Alexander Soloviev (historian)

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[edit] Spellings of name

Article currently states that this person's name is spelled:

These spellings don't match. First the first name:

Assuming that one of the cyrillic form is correct then it should not be spelled with "x" in English as that would result in it being pronounced something like "Алегз...", нот "Алекс...". From that perspective it whould be spelled either "Aleksandar" or "Aleksandr" or, maybe, Aleksander - depending on what his first name really was - yet another question.

Now the last name - or the ending of it. In Russian it is said to be "...ёв". Since there are two dots on top of "ё" then Serbian equivalent is "јов", not "јев" and English variant should be "iov", not "iev". This is where English and Serbian variants agree and, if they are correct, then Russian form should be changed to "Соловьев" (without dots on "е").

I don't know anything about this person, so I won't change anything, but anyone more familiar should.

--Aleksandar Šušnjar 15:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

In general, Russian is transliterated using the guidelines outlined at WP:RUS. With human names, however, the situation is more complicated, and a case like this one definitely falls into the grey area. First names are usually transliterated per WP:RUS, but an anglicized form can be used for some names ("Alexander" being one of them). The reason for that is that "Alexander" and "Александр" (Ale[ks/x]andr) are the same name, but the former is perceived better by the Anglophones (and additionally, it is used in English academic works to refer to this particular person). Problem is, we don't have a definite policy that would prescribe usage of one variant of a name over another, so one mostly has to rely on common sense. From what I see, "Alexander" seems to be the best available choice.
As for the last name, WP:RUS almost always takes over (so "Solovyov" would be correct), unless another variant is extremely widespread and well-known (Gorbachev is a perennial example). Again, there is unfortunately no policy defining what's "widespread" and what's not. In this case I guess it mostly depends on whether or not this Slavist is exclusively known as "Soloviev" in English, or if other spellings are occasionally used.
All that said, if the subject of the article had a preference for his name to be spelled in English in a particular way, that's what we should be using, no matter how weird it might look (such preference should, of course, be documented at the talk page).
I know that I probably didn't clarify too much, but hopefully this sheds some light on the current situation with the transliteration of Russian human names. If you have some proposals that you think would bring more order to existing standards and practices, you are welcome to post them at WP:CYR—a thinktank for the new policy on Cyrillic transliteration.
As for this particular case, my recommendation would be to move the article to Alexander Solovyov with all other variants being redirects.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:52, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your detailed explanation. There may be a parallel with the case of Alexander Vasiliev who spelt his surname "Vasiliev" rather than "Vasilyev". I don't see much sense in moving the article, although a redirect from Alexander Solovyov is desirable. --Ghirla -трёп- 22:39, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
OK, no problem. I am also not too eager to move articles in absence of straightforward guidelines regarding Russian human names.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:31, 14 September 2006 (UTC)