Romanization Systems

PCGN and the US Board on Geographic Names jointly agree romanization systems to be used by official bodies in the United Kingdom and the United States for geographical names originally rendered in non-Roman scripts. The joint systems are published in the latest edition (September 2008) of Romanization Systems and Roman-script Spelling Conventions.  Click here to read the Introduction to the Guide (pdf 2217KB) and here to download Appendix B (Optimizing Software and Operating Systems to Display BGN-Approved Geographic Names) (pdf 1617KB).

The romanisation tables are available to download in .pdf format.  Click on the required script to access the tables:

Amharic (pdf 581KB)
Arabic (pdf 719KB)
Armenian (pdf 298KB)
Azerbaijani (pdf 395KB)
Baluchi (pdf 429KB)
Bulgarian (pdf 365KB)
Burmese (pdf 199KB)
Byelorussian (pdf 336KB)
Chinese Characters (pdf 231KB)
Georgian (pdf 279KB)
Greek (pdf 333KB)
Hebrew (pdf 536KB)
Japanese Kana (pdf 361KB)
Kazakh (pdf 397KB)
Khmer (pdf 335KB)
Kirghiz (pdf 346KB)
Korean (pdf 274KB)
Lao (pdf 450KB)
Macedonian Cyrillic (pdf 355KB)
Maldivian (pdf 348KB)
Moldovan (table of correspondences for Roman script) (pdf 256KB)
Mongolian Cyrillic (pdf 357KB)
Nepali (pdf 384KB)
Pashto (pdf 702KB)
Persian (pdf 573KB)
Russian (pdf 535KB)
Serbian Cyrillic (pdf 325KB)
Tajik (pdf 246KB)
Tatar (table of correspondences for Roman script) (pdf 379KB)
Thai (pdf 186KB)
Tigrinya (pdf 253KB)
Turkmen (table of correspondences for new Roman script) (pdf 347KB)
Ukrainian (pdf 379KB)
Urdu (pdf 221KB)
Uzbek (table of correspondences for new Roman script) (pdf 347KB)

Roman-script spelling conventions (pdf 285KB)

The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names established a Working Group on Romanization Systems to consider and reach agreement on romanization systems proposed by national official bodies.
For more information and to download tables of systems adopted by the UN, please click here.