Proper English transliteration of Hindi words

[Nerys Ghemor]

I was wondering if there is anyone who could answer this question.

In doing research for some of my stories, I've encountered multiple spellings of Hindi words and names, such as "sari" vs. "saree," or "Mukherji" vs. "Mukherjee."

There are other differences I've seen as well, but that's one of the most "obvious" that jumps out to me. And in the case of the "sari" example, the spellchecker on Firefox is accepting both versions. What is the preferred system for transliterating Hindi words into English? What is considered most proper?

 

[Finn]

Paging Kestra

That reminds me. Has she been around lately?

 

[RoJoHen]

She just posted in the "Sexy or Creepy" thread.

 

[Cicero]

Hindi transliteration is inconsistent, partly because no one official system dominates, and partly because of carelessness among everyday Hindi speakers writing in Latin script (they transliterate on the fly, using their knowledge of the phonetics of Hindi and the English version of Latin script).

Hunterian transliteration is the official system of the Government of India. It was designed to produce clarity in English, and values that result over phonetic accuracy.

The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is often used academically, but is phonetically faithful to Sanskrit, not Hindi.

ISO 15919 is a newer standard, developed for use in digital libraries.

Harvard-Kyoto/ITRANS is a somewhat widely used scheme designed to avoid the use of diacritics; it's especially popular online.

The Library of Congress and the UN also have competing standards (ALA-AC and UNRSGN, respectively; the latter is sometimes called UN 1977).

One further somewhat popular system is Velthuis, which removes case sensitivity from the ITRANS system, allowing normal English capitalization rules.

Which system a particular writer chooses is somewhat arbitrary, if they choose a system at all. Wikipedia has a table which compares some of the more popular systems.

 

[Kestra]

Wow, I didn't know any of that. You guys clearly expected too much of me.

With all due respect to everything official, most people don't really care one way or the other (at least in my limited experience). My name is "Rakhee," but "Rakhi" is much more common. My mother's dakh nam is "Rupa" whereas some people use "Roopa." I tend to use "sari" myself, but there's no real reason for that.

I will say that Mukherji/Mukherjee is likely to be Bengali, not Hindi. Same with anything similar like that (Banerjee, Chatterji, etc.).

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

That's good to know. I wanted to make sure I didn't use any transliteration that would look outdated or ignorant.

Mainly I'm going to be describing clothing and fashion. But thanks for letting me know about the origin of that name, too. There's an actress I picked to represent one of my characters in my writing, who has the last name of "Mukherjee."

 

[Gryffindorian]

Fascinating. Namaste.

 

[scotpens]

Now if we could only agree on the right way to spell Hanukkah.

 

[Gryffindorian]

It should start with an H, not a C, as in Channukah.

 

[Misfit Toy]

My name is "Rakhee," but "Rakhi" is much more common.

How common is calling you "Rocky"?

 

[Kestra]

My name is "Rakhee," but "Rakhi" is much more common.

How common is calling you "Rocky"?

That's how I have everyone pronounce my name. I love it!

 

[Gryffindorian]

For some reason, I thought the emphasis was on the second syllable, as in Racquel. It's good to know.