# Names for Latin letters in Russian.



## Lorenc

I would like to know if there is any standardised way to refer to Latin letters when speaking Russian, e.g. to describe the original spelling of a proper name; for example, I may want to specify that my name Walter (Вальтер) is spelt in Italian with a W, not with a V. 
To give another example, according to my textbook, a 'V belt' (a car part) is called in Russian V-ремень, how would you pronounce it? Perhaps like В-ремень?


----------



## Vovan

I'm only aware of the way we name Latin letters in mathematics.
Here's a helpful piece of writing about that:
http://www.ljplus.ru/img4/f/a/fad_gel/russk_nazv_lat_bukv.gif
(Source: _Владимир Успенский. Невтон - Ньюто́н - Нью́тон, или Сколько сторон имеет языковой знак?_)


----------



## lectrice

Современный латинский алфавит - Латинский алфавит — Википедия

 V-ремень - _вэ-ремень_


----------



## GCRaistlin

There's no standardised way, unfortunately. For W, you may use _дубль-в_ or _дабл-ю_ (which is actually correct only for English - but nobody cares)_._


----------



## Awwal12

Lorenc said:


> a 'V belt' (a car part) is called in Russian V-ремень


A quick search indicates it's rather клиновой ремень or клиновидный ремень. It would be generally pretty strange to describe shapes in terms of foreign alphabets (the only exception which quickly comes to my mind is "дельтави́дный"; "икс-обра́зный" would probably do as well, but "V-образный" is simply ambiguous in speech).


----------



## Vovan

GCRaistlin said:


> For W, you may use _дубль-в_ or _дабл-ю_ (which is actually correct only for English - but nobody cares)_._


'Дабл-ю' is not really passable in contexts other than  'три дабл-ю' (WWW).


----------



## Lorenc

Thank to all and for the links, that answers my question. It seems the traditional Russian names for Latin letters are essentially the French names for letters. I find it curious that in the link given in post 2 it is said that a (Russian) chemist would scoff someone who pronounced H2O as ха два о instead of the recommended аш два о. Is it really so?


----------



## Maroseika

Lorenc said:


> I find it curious that in the link given in post 2 it is said that a (Russian) chemist would scoff someone who pronounced H2O as ха два о instead of the recommended аш два о. Is it really so?


Of course this would sound weird and show that someone just doesn't know how to pronounce chemical elements. However in chemistry only some one-letter names are pronounced like letters: H, O, P, C, N, S (but not I, F, U, Y, B and K). All the rest are called by their full Russian or (some elements), Latin names.


----------



## Awwal12

Lorenc said:


> It seems the traditional Russian names for Latin letters are essentially the French names for letters.


It is mostly so, except it has "це" for "c" and "дубль" [~'dubəlʲ] instead of "*дубле" (plus obvious phonetic adaptations).

Sometimes German pronunciations interfere, though, as in your example with "ха" (although I never heard "фау" for "v", for a comparison), and in non-scientific contexts people may often prefer English letter names (partly because they often sound less ambiguous).


----------



## Rosett

Lorenc said:


> I would like to know if there is any standardised way to refer to Latin letters when speaking Russian, e.g. to describe the original spelling of a proper name; for example, I may want to specify that my name Walter (Вальтер) is spelt in Italian with a W, not with a V.
> To give another example, according to my textbook, a 'V belt' (a car part) is called in Russian V-ремень, how would you pronounce it? Perhaps like В-ремень?


Unless you insist on your Italian spelling, your name would be written in Russian by default rather as *Уо́лтер*, as if it’s pronounced in English, not Вальтер (as if it would the brand of handguns.) Therefore, *W* can become *У* in Russian Cyrillic.


----------



## Lorenc

Awwal12 said:


> A quick search indicates it's rather клиновой ремень or клиновидный ремень.


In fact, it looked a little strange that Russian should recur to using a foreign letter for this car part... what's more, the Polish translation next to V-ремень (it's a phrasebook of Polish phrases for Russians) translates it as 'pas klinowy'. It was interesting to know how the names of chemical elements (or mathematical symbols) should be pronounced (this mostly concerns the letters G, H, J, W); so H2O is аш два о, Newton's gravitational constant G is called жэ and, presumably, the total angular momentum quantum number J is йот or, perhaps, жи. Nevertheless, Wikipedia reports that the J/ψ meson is called джей-пси мезон, no doubt because of English influence.


----------



## Rosett

Lorenc said:


> In fact, it looked a little strange that Russian should recur to using a foreign letter for this car part... what's more, the Polish translation next to V-ремень (it's a phrasebook of Polish phrases for Russians) translates it as 'pas klinowy'.


In Russian, it’s «клиновый ремень.»


----------



## Awwal12

Rosett said:


> In Russian, it’s «клиновый ремень.»


I suppose both кли́новый and клиново́й should be acceptable. Yefremova mentions the both words in her dictionary; Wikipedia states that "клиновой затвор" is the same as "клиновый затвор". Google seemingly gives more results for "клиновой ремень" than for "клиновый ремень".


Lorenc said:


> It was interesting to know how the names of chemical elements (or mathematical symbols) should be pronounced


Ironically, with chemical elements it's pretty complicated and irregular. For one elements, that's the Latin letter name ("аш два о", "аш эн о три"); for others it is their Latin proper name ("купрум о", "гидраргирум эс", "силициум о два"); for the third kind it's just their Russian names ("натрий йод", "калий хлор", "бор два о три").
(Curiously, "иод" is predominantly pronounced as [йот], as if the first letter was "й".)


Rosett said:


> Unless you insist on your Italian spelling, your name would be written in Russian by default rather as *Уо́лтер*


If it's an English name (names like "Вальтер Скотт" are indeed historical). But if it's, for instance, German, then it would be "Вальтер".


----------



## Rosett

Lorenc said:


> the total angular momentum quantum number J is йот or, perhaps, жи.


It is *жи*, as if in French, never _йот_.
Also, Hamiltonian (H) and any of its variations is traditionally *аш*, never _х_, due to an obvious reason. The same is true for the Planck constant.


----------



## Lorenc

Rosett said:


> Also, Hamiltonian (H) and any of its variations is traditionally *аш*, never _х_, due to a obvious reason. The same is true for the Planck constant.



I see, that's good to know! But what's the `obvious' reason?


----------



## partypilfix

We pronounce it like 'ви-ремень' and your name will transliterate as Уолтер if you want us to pronounce it with W.


----------



## Maroseika

partypilfix said:


> We pronounce it like 'ви-ремень' and your name will transliterate as Уолтер if you want us to pronounce it with W.


As already explained, this is not ви-ремень, but клиновой ремень. However, for example, V-образная канавка is pronounced вэ-образная. Strange enough, but everybody understands it's V-shape and not B-shape.


----------

