Romanization of Greek
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Romanization of Greek is the transliteration ( letter-mapping) or transcription (
sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the br ...
-mapping) of text from the
Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...
into the
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...
.


History

The conventions for
writing Writing is the act of creating a persistent representation of language. A writing system includes a particular set of symbols called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which they encode a particular spoken language. Every written language ...
and romanizing
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
and
Modern Greek Modern Greek (, or , ), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the language sometimes referred to ...
differ markedly. The sound of the English letter B () was written as in ancient Greek but is now written as the digraph , while the modern sounds like the English letter V () instead. The Greek name became
Johannes Johannes is a Medieval Latin form of the personal name that usually appears as " John" in English language contexts. It is a variant of the Greek and Classical Latin variants (Ιωάννης, '' Ioannes''), itself derived from the Hebrew name '' Y ...
in
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
and then John in English, but in modern Greek has become ; this might be written as Yannis, Jani, Ioannis, Yiannis, or Giannis, but not Giannes or Giannēs as it would be for ancient Greek. The word might variously appear as Hagiοs, Agios, Aghios, or Ayios, or simply be translated as " Holy" or "
Saint In Christianity, Christian belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of sanctification in Christianity, holiness, imitation of God, likeness, or closeness to God in Christianity, God. However, the use of the ...
" in English forms of
Greek placenames This is a list of Greek place names as they exist in the Greek language. *Places involved in the history of Greek culture, including: **Historic Greek regions, including: ***Ancient Greece, including colonies and contacted peoples *** Hellenis ...
. Traditional English renderings of Greek names originated from Roman systems established in antiquity. The Roman alphabet itself was a form of the Cumaean alphabet derived from the Euboean script that valued as and as and used variant forms of and that became L and S. When this script was used to write the classical Greek alphabet, ⟨κ⟩ was replaced with ⟨c⟩, ⟨αι⟩ and ⟨οι⟩ became ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨œ⟩, and ⟨ει⟩ and ⟨ου⟩ were simplified to ⟨i⟩ (more rarely—corresponding to an earlier pronunciation—⟨e⟩) and ⟨u⟩.
Aspirated consonant In phonetics, aspiration is a strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with t ...
s like ⟨θ⟩, ⟨φ⟩, initial-⟨ρ⟩, and ⟨χ⟩ simply wrote out the sound: ⟨th⟩, ⟨ph⟩, ⟨rh⟩, and ⟨ch⟩. Because
English orthography English orthography comprises the set of rules used when writing the English language, allowing readers and writers to associate written graphemes with the sounds of spoken English, as well as other features of the language. English's orthograp ...
has changed so much from the original Greek, modern scholarly transliteration now usually renders ⟨κ⟩ as ⟨k⟩ and the diphthongs ⟨αι, οι, ει, ου⟩ as ⟨ai, oi, ei, ou⟩. " Greeklish" has also spread within
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itself, owing to the rapid spread of digital
telephony Telephony ( ) is the field of technology involving the development, application, and deployment of telecommunications services for the purpose of electronic transmission of voice, fax, or data, between distant parties. The history of telephony is ...
from cultures using the
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...
. Since Greek
typeface A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...
s and
font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts " Roman" (or "regul ...
s are not always supported or robust, Greek email and chatting has adopted a variety of formats for rendering Greek and Greek shorthand using Latin letters. Examples include "8elo" and "thelw" for , "3ava" for , and "yuxi" for . Owing to the difficulties encountered in transliterating and transcribing both ancient and modern Greek into the Latin alphabet, a number of regulatory bodies have been established. The Hellenic Organization for Standardization (ELOT), in cooperation with the
International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. M ...
(ISO), released a system in 1983 which has since been formally adopted by the
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, the United Kingdom and United States.


Tables

The following tables list several romanization schemes from the Greek alphabet to modern English. Note, however, that the ELOT, UN, and ISO formats for Modern Greek intend themselves as translingual and may be applied in any language using the
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...
.


Ancient Greek

The
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and
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
romanization scheme employs its "Ancient or Medieval Greek" system for all works and authors up to the
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in 1453, although
Byzantine Greek Medieval Greek (also known as Middle Greek, Byzantine Greek, or Romaic; Greek: ) is the stage of the Greek language between the end of classical antiquity in the 5th–6th centuries and the end of the Middle Ages, conventionally dated to the F ...
was pronounced distinctly and some have considered "Modern" Greek to have begun as early as the 12th century. For treatment of polytonic Greek letters—for example, —see also the section on romanizing Greek diacritical marks below.


Modern Greek

ELOT approved in 1982 the ELOT 743 standard, revised in 2001, whose ''Type 2'' () '' transcription'' scheme has been adopted by the Greek and Cypriot governments as standard for romanization of names on Greek and Cypriot passports. It also comprised a ''Type 1'' () '' transliteration'' table, which was extensively modified in the second edition of the standard. International versions of ELOT 743, with an English language standard document, were approved by the UN (V/19, 1987) and the British and American governments. The ISO approved in 1997 its version, ISO 843, with a different ''Type 1'' transliteration system, which was adopted four years later by ELOT itself, while the U.N. did not update its version. So the ''transcriptions'' of Modern Greek into Latin letters used by ELOT, UN and ISO are essentially equivalent, while there remain minor differences in how they approach reversible ''transliteration''. The
American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world. History 19th century ...
and
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
romanization scheme employs its "Modern Greek" system for all works and authors following the
Fall of Constantinople The Fall of Constantinople, also known as the Conquest of Constantinople, was the capture of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Empire. The city was captured on 29 May 1453 as part of the culmination of a 55-da ...
in 1453. In the table below, the special rules for vowel combinations () only apply when these letters function as digraphs. There are also words where the same letters stand side by side incidentally but represent separate vowels. In these cases each of the two letters is transcribed separately according to the normal rules for single letters. Such cases are marked in Greek orthography by either having an accent on the first rather than the second vowel letter, or by having a diaeresis over the second letter. For treatment of accents and diaereses—for example, —also see the section on romanizing Greek diacritical marks below.


Diacritical marks

The traditional polytonic orthography of Greek uses several distinct diacritical marks to render what was originally the
pitch accent A pitch-accent language is a type of language that, when spoken, has certain syllables in words or morphemes that are prominent, as indicated by a distinct contrasting pitch (music), pitch (tone (linguistics), linguistic tone) rather than by vol ...
of Ancient Greek and the presence or absence of word-initial . In 1982, monotonic orthography was officially introduced for modern Greek. The only diacritics that remain are the
acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...
(indicating stress) and the diaeresis (indicating that two consecutive vowels should not be combined). When a Greek
diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...
is accented, the accent mark is placed over the ''second'' letter of the pair. This means that an accent over the ''first'' letter of the pair indicates vowels which should be taken (and romanized) separately. Although the second vowel is not marked with a superfluous diaeresis in Greek, the first-edition ELOT 743 and the UN systems place a diaeresis on the Latin vowel for the sake of clarity. 'Bámpīs Koutroúlīs'', Babis G. Kutrulisbr>
'Metatropī́ tou ellīnikoú alfavī́tou me latinikoús charaktī́res'' (ELOT 743), "Conversion of the Greek alphabet to Latin characters (ELOT 743)" Accessed 3 October 2014. 2008.
Department of Technical Co-operation for Development
"Fifth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names: Montreal, 18—31 August 1987", "Report of the Conference",
United Nations (New York), 1987.
Apart from the diacritical marks native to Greek itself or used to romanize its characters, linguists also regularly mark
vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual length (phonetics), duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels. On one hand, many ...
with macrons () marking
long vowel In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels. On one hand, many languages do not d ...
s and rounded
breve A breve ( , less often , grammatical gender, neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark , shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (, the wedge or in ...
s () marking
short vowel In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels. On one hand, many languages do not ...
s. Where these are romanized, it is common to mark the long vowels with macrons over the Latin letters and to leave the short vowels unmarked; such macrons should not be confused or conflated with those used by some systems to mark eta and omega as distinct from epsilon, iota, and
omicron Omicron (, ; uppercase Ο, lowercase ο, ) is the fifteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. This letter is derived from the Phoenician letter ayin: . In classical Greek, omicron represented the close-mid back rounded vowel in contrast to '' o ...
.


Numerals

Greece's early Attic numerals were based on a small sample of letters (including heta) arranged in multiples of 5 and 10, likely forming the inspiration for the later Etruscan and
Roman numerals Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, eac ...
. This early system was replaced by
Greek numerals Greek numerals, also known as Ionic, Ionian, Milesian, or Alexandrian numerals, is a numeral system, system of writing numbers using the letters of the Greek alphabet. In modern Greece, they are still used for ordinal number (linguistics), ordi ...
which employed the entire alphabet, including the nonstandard letters digamma, stigma, or sigma-tau (placed between epsilon and zeta), koppa (placed between pi and rho), and sampi (placed after omega). As revised in 2001, ELOT 743 provides for the uncommon characters to be given (in Greek) as $ for stigma, + for koppa, and / for sampi. These symbols are not given lower-case equivalents. When used as numbers, the letters are used in combination with the upper ''keraia'' numeral sign ⟨ ʹ⟩ to denote numbers from 1 to 900 and in combination with the lower ''keraia'' ⟨ ͵⟩ to denote multiples of 1000. (''For a full table of the signs and their values, see''
Greek numerals Greek numerals, also known as Ionic, Ionian, Milesian, or Alexandrian numerals, is a numeral system, system of writing numbers using the letters of the Greek alphabet. In modern Greece, they are still used for ordinal number (linguistics), ordi ...
.) These values are traditionally romanized as
Roman numeral Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, ea ...
s, so that would be translated as Alexander III of Macedon and transliterated as ''Aléxandros III o Makedṓn'' rather than ''Aléxandros G or ''Aléxandros 3''. Greek laws and other official documents of
Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...
which employ these numerals, however, are to be formally romanized using "decimal"
Arabic numerals The ten Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) are the most commonly used symbols for writing numbers. The term often also implies a positional notation number with a decimal base, in particular when contrasted with Roman numera ...
.


Punctuation marks

Ancient Greek text did not mark word division with spaces or
interpunct An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot, centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in Classical Latin. ( Word-separating spaces did not appe ...
s, instead running the words together ('' scripta continua''). In the Hellenistic period, a variety of symbols arose for
punctuation Punctuation marks are marks indicating how a piece of writing, written text should be read (silently or aloud) and, consequently, understood. The oldest known examples of punctuation marks were found in the Mesha Stele from the 9th century BC, c ...
or editorial marking; such punctuation (or the lack thereof) are variously romanized, inserted, or ignored in different modern editions. Modern Greek punctuation generally follows French with the notable exception of Greek's use of a separate
question mark The question mark (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism) is a punctuation, punctuation mark that indicates a question or interrogative clause or phrase in many languages. History The history of the question mark is ...
, the '' erotimatiko'', which is shaped like the Latinate semicolon. Greek punctuation which has been given formal romanizations include:


Uncommon letters

There are many archaic forms and local variants of the
Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...
.
Beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...
, for example, might appear as round Β or pointed throughout Greece but is also found in the forms (at Gortyn), and ( Thera), ( Argos), (
Melos Milos or Melos (; , ; ) is a volcanic Greek island in the Aegean Sea, just north of the Sea of Crete. It is the southwestern-most island of the Cyclades group. The ''Venus de Milo'' (now in the Louvre), the '' Poseidon of Melos'' (now in the ...
), (
Corinth Corinth ( ; , ) is a municipality in Corinthia in Greece. The successor to the ancient Corinth, ancient city of Corinth, it is a former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese (region), Peloponnese, which is located in south-central Greece. Sin ...
), ( Megara and
Byzantium Byzantium () or Byzantion () was an ancient Greek city in classical antiquity that became known as Constantinople in late antiquity and Istanbul today. The Greek name ''Byzantion'' and its Latinization ''Byzantium'' continued to be used as a n ...
), and even (
Cyclades The CYCLADES computer network () was a French research network created in the early 1970s. It was one of the pioneering networks experimenting with the concept of packet switching and, unlike the ARPANET, was explicitly designed to facilitate i ...
). Well into the modern period, classical and medieval Greek was also set using a wide array of ligatures, symbols combining or abbreviating various sets of letters, such as those included in Claude Garamond's 16th-century '' grecs du roi''. For the most part, such variants—as and for π, for σ τ, and for —are just silently emended to their standard forms and transliterated accordingly. Letters with no equivalent in the classical Greek alphabet such as heta ( & ), meanwhile, usually take their nearest English equivalent (in this case, h) but are too uncommon to be listed in formal transliteration schemes. Uncommon Greek letters which have been given formal romanizations include:


Standardization

The sounds of
Modern Greek Modern Greek (, or , ), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the language sometimes referred to ...
have diverged from both those of Ancient Greek and their descendant letters in English and other languages. This led to a variety of romanizations for names and placenames in the 19th and 20th century. The Hellenic Organization for Standardization (ELOT) issued its system in cooperation with the
International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. M ...
(ISO) in 1983. This system was adopted (with minor modifications) by the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
' Fifth Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names at
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in 1987, United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, Working Group on Romanization Systems. ''Report on the Current Status of United Nations Romanization Systems for Geographical Names:''
Greek
.
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
(New York), 2003. Accessed 6 October 2014.
by the United Kingdom's Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use (PCGN) and by the United States' Board on Geographic Names (BGN) in 1996, and by the ISO itself in 1997.
International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. M ...
. " ISO 843:1997 (Conversion of Greek characters into Latin characters)". 2010.
Romanization of names for official purposes (as with passports and identity cards) were required to use the ELOT system within Greece until 2011, when a legal decision permitted Greeks to use irregular forms (such as " Demetrios" for ) provided that official identification and documents also list the standard forms (as, for example, "Demetrios OR Dimitrios").Hellenic National Passport Center. Press Releases:
Transliteration of the Passport Holder's Name in Latin
". 12 February 2012. Accessed 3 October 2014.
Other romanization systems still encountered are the BGN/PCGN's earlier 1962 system and the system employed by the
American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world. History 19th century ...
and the United States'
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
.


See also

* Classical compound * Cyrillization of Greek *
English words of Greek origin The Greek language has contributed to the English lexicon in five main ways: * vernacular borrowings, transmitted orally through Vulgar Latin directly into Old English, ''e.g.'', 'butter' (, from Latin < ), or through French, ''e.g.'', 'ochre'; ...
*
Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...
*
List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names This list of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names is intended to help those unfamiliar with classical languages to understand and remember the scientific names of organisms. The binomial nomenclature used for animals and plants ...
* Wiktionary's articles on Ancient Greek romanization and pronunciation, numerals,
punctuation Punctuation marks are marks indicating how a piece of writing, written text should be read (silently or aloud) and, consequently, understood. The oldest known examples of punctuation marks were found in the Mesha Stele from the 9th century BC, c ...
and Modern Greek transliteration.


References


External links


ELOT 743 Converter
a free online tool by the Greek government for official purposes using 2nd-edition ELOT transcription
Google Translate
a free online tool providing UN transliteration of Modern Greek. Also comes as application
Transliterate.com
a free online tool providing transliteration of Ancient Greek *
Transliteration of Non-Roman Scripts
', tables in pdf format by Thomas T. Pedersen
Greeklish converter
Greeklish to Greek conversion and Greek transliteration with user-selectable options {{Romanization Greek language Hellenic scripts