REPORT ON THE CURRENT STATUS OF
UNITED NATIONS ROMANIZATION SYSTEMS FOR GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES
Compiled by the UNGEGN Working Group on Romanization Systems
Version 5.0, October 2021

Sinhala

There is as yet no United Nations approved romanization systems for Sinhala (Sinhalese).

The Sri Lanka Survey Department has recently devised a romanization system for Sinhala based on ISO 15919 with some modifications. This system was approved by Sri Lanka’s Cabinet of Ministers on 4 September 2018 (Cabinet Paper No.18/1965/829/005). Since that date some further amendments have been made and there is a Sinhala romanization utility published at https://www.survey.gov.lk/RomanizationConverter/. Currently the Sri Lanka Survey Department is preparing a national map with romanized names.

Sinhala uses an alphasyllabic script whereby each character represents a syllable rather than one sound. Vowels and diphthongs are marked in two ways: as independent characters (used syllable-initially) and in an abbreviated form, to denote vowels after consonants.

System of romanization

Character variants and a list of ligatures have been added. Current, amended romanization equivalents are shown as main forms while the 2018 equivalents have been added in parentheses.

I. Independent vowel characters

1 a
2 ā
3 æ
4 ǣ
5 i
6 ī
7 u
8 ū
9
10
11
12
13 e
14 ē
15 ĩ (ai)
16 o
17 ō
18 au

II. Abbreviated vowel characters and other symbols

1   a
2  ා ā
3 æA
4 ǣA
5 i
6 ī
7 uB
8 ūC
9
10
11 e
12 ē
13 ĩ (ai)
14 o
15 ō
16 au
17
18
19 (D)

III. Consonant characters

1 ka
2 khaA
3 ga
4 ghaA
5 ṁaA
6 chaA
7 chhaA
8 ja
9 qa (jha)A
10 ñaA
11 ṭa
12 ṯa (ṭha)A
13 ḍa
14 ḍhaA
15 ṇa
16 ta
17 thaA
18 da
19 dhaA
20 na
21 pa
22 phaA
23 ba
24 bhaA
25 ma
26 ya
27 ra
28 la
29 va
30 fa
31 śaA
32 shaA
33 sa
34 ha
35 ḷa
36 n̆ga
37 gna
38 n̆ǰa (n̆ja)
39 n̆ḍa
40 n̆da
41 ḅa (m̆ba)

IV. Consonant ligatures

Examples
  ර්‍  r- ර්‍ක rka, ර්‍ට rṭa, ර්‍ම rma, ර්‍ව rva, ර්‍ෂ rsha.
්‍ර -r ක්‍ර kra, ග්‍ර gra, ඝ්‍ර ghra, ජ්‍ර jra, ට්‍ර ṭra, ඩ්‍ර ḍra, ත්‍ර tra, ද්‍ර dra, ධ්‍ර dhra, ප්‍ර pra, බ්‍ර bra, භ්‍ර bhra, ශ්‍ර śra.
්‍ය -y ක්‍ය kya, ත්‍ය tya, ව්‍ය vya.

Other ligatures: ක්‍ෂ ksha, න්‍ද nda.