Cyrillic Transliterator
Transliterate Russian with the ICAO passport table or the BGN/PCGN standard.
The machine-readable travel document standard, applied to Russian passports. Plain ASCII, one fixed spelling per letter.
If you already hold a passport, the spelling printed in it is the one to use on visas, tickets, and applications — even where it differs from this table. A mismatch between a ticket and a passport causes real problems at a border.
Russian has no single romanisation. A passport applies the ICAO Doc 9303 table, where Юлия becomes Iuliia and Дмитрий becomes Dmitrii. English-language publishing uses BGN/PCGN, which writes the same names Yuliya and Dmitriy.
Why the same name is spelled several ways
There is no universal romanisation of Russian, which is why one person can legitimately appear as Yuriy, Yury, Iurii, and Jurij across different documents. Each spelling comes from a different system built for a different purpose, and none of them is an error.
ICAO Doc 9303 is the machine-readable travel document standard, and it is what Russian authorities apply when issuing a passport. It is built for machines: plain ASCII, no diacritics, one fixed output per letter with no context rules. That predictability is the point — a border system has to parse it the same way every time.
BGN/PCGN is the standard agreed between the US and UK geographic-names boards, and it is what English-language maps, newspapers, and academic writing generally follow. It is designed for a human reader to pronounce, so it spells е as ye where the sound has a y- glide, and it uses ë for ё.
The letters where they diverge
Most of the alphabet is identical between the two. The differences cluster in a handful of letters that carry a y- sound: й, ю, and я are i, iu, and ia under ICAO but y, yu, and ya under BGN/PCGN. That single difference accounts for most of the confusion people encounter with their own names.
Worked example: Дмитрий
The final й is where the two systems part company:
- 1 Take the letters in order. Д-м-и-т-р-и-й — seven Cyrillic letters.
- 2 Map the straightforward ones. Д is d, м is m, и is i, т is t, р is r. Both systems agree on all of these.
- 3 Handle the final й. ICAO writes it i, giving Dmitrii. BGN/PCGN writes it y, giving Dmitriy.
- 4 Pick the system that matches the document. For a visa application, match the passport. For an academic paper or a map, follow the publisher’s house style.
Russian Cyrillic in both systems
ICAO Doc 9303 is the passport table. BGN/PCGN entries with two forms depend on position — the y- form appears at the start of a word and after a vowel, й, ъ, or ь.
| Cyrillic | ICAO (passport) | BGN/PCGN |
|---|---|---|
| А а | a | a |
| Б б | b | b |
| В в | v | v |
| Г г | g | g |
| Д д | d | d |
| Е е | e | e / ye |
| Ё ё | e | ë / yë |
| Ж ж | zh | zh |
| З з | z | z |
| И и | i | i |
| Й й | i | y |
| К к | k | k |
| Л л | l | l |
| М м | m | m |
| Н н | n | n |
| О о | o | o |
| П п | p | p |
| Р р | r | r |
| С с | s | s |
| Т т | t | t |
| У у | u | u |
| Ф ф | f | f |
| Х х | kh | kh |
| Ц ц | ts | ts |
| Ч ч | ch | ch |
| Ш ш | sh | sh |
| Щ щ | shch | shch |
| Ъ ъ | ie | " |
| Ы ы | y | y |
| Ь ь | (omitted) | ’ |
| Э э | e | e |
| Ю ю | iu | yu |
| Я я | ia | ya |
Your passport overrides the table
This is the practical rule that matters most. Whatever any standard says, the spelling printed in your passport is the one to use on visa applications, plane tickets, university forms, and bank records. Russian passport transliteration rules changed in 2014, so a passport issued before then may carry a spelling the current table would not produce — and that older spelling remains correct for that document.
A mismatch between a ticket and a passport is a genuine problem at a border rather than a pedantic one, and airlines are not obliged to fix it for free. Russian authorities do allow an applicant to request that a previous spelling be preserved on a new passport, on the strength of existing documents, which is worth doing if your name is already established in Latin script.
Two smaller notes. The hard sign ъ becomes ie under ICAO, which surprises people — Подъезд transliterates as Podieezd. And the soft sign ь is dropped entirely in the passport table, so Ярославль becomes Iaroslavl. Neither is a bug; both follow from the table being built for machine parsing rather than for reading aloud.