Title page

Updated: 14 April 2000.

United Nations Romanization Systems for Geographical Names.
Preliminary Report on Their Current Status.

Changes since Version 1.2 (November, 1999)

The following changes were made to the report during or after the 20th Session of UNGEGN in New York (January, 2000).

• Language names were corrected in accordance with the statement made in the report (see the list of languages, countries and romanization systems): "Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic" (instead of "Serbian"), "Byelorussian" (following an established name of the language, instead of "Belarusian")
• The status of romanization for Dari was clarified and a note added to the list of languages, countries and romanization systems
• A note was added in the list of languages, countries and romanization systems to clarify the status of the romanization systems of Mongolian (in China), Tibetan and Uighur
• Arabic: a small reference note on alif was added to the table of consonants; an additional character was added in the vowels table to indicate 'long a'
• Bulgarian: information was updated and comparison with another system applied in Bulgaria added
• Greek: in part 4 note 1 three romanization equivalents were corrected according to the updated Toponymic Guidelines of Greece (Working Paper 90 of the 20th Session of UNGEGN); in part 5 comparison with the former BGN/PCGN system was revised and complemented
• Hebrew: part 3, 3rd sentence was complemented; part 4, index 3 added to the first character of f, note 4 was complemented (these changes were also listed in the Working Paper 34/Corr. of the 20th Session of UNGEGN)
• Japanese: note 4 was replaced and note 5 added; new characters were added to denote 'long o' (ô) and the syllables di/ji, du/zu
• Khmer: comparison with a provisional system used by the Geographic Department in Cambodia (1996) was added
• Oriya: two variations were added to the table of abbreviated vowel characters
• Pashto: a small reference note on alip was added to the table of consonants; an additional character was added in the vowels table to indicate 'long a'
• Persian: part 1 was rephrased, including a reference to the toponymic guidelines of the Islamic Republic of Iran; a small reference note on alef was added to the table of consonants; additional characters were added to the vowels table to indicate 'long a'
• Tajik: the alphabet was rearranged, following the new official order; the year of the adoption of the BGN/PCGN system was corrected;
• Telugu: small corrections regarding the example of Ramgapur and a variation of the syllable 'ra' were made.

This page will also contain notification of any technical errors that will be corrected in the report. All updates, if necessary, will appear separately.