# Ukrainian: Natalia



## Alberto77

which is the common /correct spelling of this name in ukrainian?
natalia, natalya, nathalia?
thanx a lot  
alb


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## mitrofan

Hello Alberto,

I am not Ukranial, so I can only guess. But the Ukranian way of spelling the name must be very close to the Russian one as the languages are similar.  Natalia is my mum´s name and we call her (in Moscow): Natalia (that´s her complete name), friends call her Natasha, you can also say Natashenka, Natusik and Nata (or Natka).

I hope that helps,

Marina


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## Alberto77

ciao Marina,
thanks a lot. I asked this because i would try to search for a friend by internet, and i found both writings:
natalya and nataliya
i don't know if one is ukrainian and the other russian/european...
anyway thanks a lot for your help ;-P
ciao
alb


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## elroy

Ukrainian does not use the Latin alphabet so neither is, technically speaking, correct way to write the name _in Ukrainian_.

I wonder if there's a standard transliteration - for some reason, I doubt it.


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## Whodunit

Alberto77 said:
			
		

> ciao Marina,
> thanks a lot. I asked this because i would try to search for a friend by internet, and i found both writings:
> natalya and nataliya
> i don't know if one is ukrainian and the other russian/european...
> anyway thanks a lot for your help ;-P
> ciao
> alb


 
I'm sure it depends on the way you pronounce it. If you say "nuh-ta-lee-ah", you should transliterate it as "Nataliya". If you, however, pronounce it like "nuh-tal-yah", I'd omit the "i" in transliteration. 

By the way, is the last letter the inverted R (я)? Does the letter exist in Ukrainian? I'd write it as Наталя. Would this be correct?


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## Outsider

Alberto77 said:
			
		

> which is the common /correct spelling of this name in ukrainian?
> natalia, natalya, nathalia?


For the Ukrainian spelling, you must use the Cyrillic alphabet. There are various ways of transliterating the Cyrillic alphabet into the Latin alphabet. The first two you wrote are both possible, _Natalia_ and _Natalya_. The other is more unusual; I've never seen _th_ be used in transcriptions of Cyrillic words.


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## MirjanaB

It would be Natalija, which is silent "j" when you read it...


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## Alberto77

Ciao, thanks everybody, especially Whodunit and MirjanaB  
My question was arised by the fact that she signed once with natalya but when she sent me a letter she wrote on the envelop nataliya, so I thought that the first time she "englishized" her name... 
ciao e grazie
Alberto


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## Xopxe

По-украински есть два варианта написания этого имени: Наталя, Наталія. Транслитерировать можно как хочешь, в том числе так, как это сделал автор нити.

The most close transliterations are Nataliya and Natalya.


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## Alberto77

Thankyou Xopxe,
even if I cannot get anything you have written in ukrainian...  ... maybe one day I'll learn something...
ciao
alb


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## mateo19

Hey!  I just saw this post and was shocked that no one wrote this beautiful woman's name correctly in Ukrainian!  Here is the correct spelling (the original post did not ask for a transliteration):

Наталя or Наталія   (if like Russian, the latter version is more official, but both are correct spellings).  Both the і and the я palatalize the preceding consonsant.
A common nickname for this name is Наталка (Natalka), although this is by no means the only nickname for her.  My Ukrainian friend transliterates her name Natalya, but according to the Ukrainian government, Наталія is officially Natalija.

I know this is an old post, and maybe this information is no longer sought after, but I simply could not leave this post without any Cyrillic characters in it at all!

PS.  I skimmed over Xopxe's post because I don't speak Russian, but he said before I did that there are two versions of Natalya in Ukrainian and he wrote the same two versions that I did.  So I confirm his information.


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## Natabka

I saw this post, after Mateo has renewed it, and - I was shocked! 
Well, even if the information is no longer sought after, justice should be established!  
I have only one comment to add to your answer, Mateo, - concerning official transliterations. Natalya (Наталя) was transliterated like this _officially_, in the foreign passport, so we may assume that transliteration of Cyrillic "я" is "ya". I've never seen "ja", unless when transliterated in German. Where have you found this variant?


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## sokol

Natabka said:


> I've never seen "ja", unless when transliterated in German.


The Viennese transliteration school (which would give 'ja' for я) was rather influental and not only used in German speaking countries - but I guess that the transliteration of the Ukrainian government (that is, not for Наталя but for Наталія = _Natalija _as given by mateo) rather is based on a (any) Latin Slavic transliteration tradition (note, those Slavic languages using the Latin alphabet have /j/ for what would be /y/ in English, /й/ in Cyrillic and [j] in IPA).

English transliteration of course would be Наталя = _Natalya _and Наталія = _Natalia _or probably _Nataliya_ - here I'm not sure.


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## mateo19

Well, I have some news concerning our posts.  I just looked up the official stance of the Ukrainian government and if I have read it correctly, it transliterates я and ю as /ya/ and /yu/, not /ja/ and /ju/.  _However_, in IPA it is of course /ja/ and /ju/ and other transliteration systems, including the "scholarly model" have /ja/ and /ju/.  And not that I consider it incredibly credible, but my Ukrainian college text book also uses /ja/ and /ju/.   Finally, if we look at other Slavic language, like Sokol so well pointed out, we see that wonderful /j/.  Look at Serbia --> Serbija.  Yugoslavia --> Jugoslavija.  Or the pronoun "I" --> ja.

Here are the two sources I used.
http://www.rada.gov.ua/translit.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Ukrainian

In a personal note, in English, "Natalya" looks more friendly than "Natalja" or "Natalija" because /j/ in English is often an affricate and here we obviously need a palatal glide.

I was wrong in assuming that the Ukrainian government officially transliterated that sound with a j instead of y.  I was mislead because of the Russian system.  When my Russian penpal sends me letters, the stamps have both Cyrillic and Roman characters.  Россия = Rossija.  

PS. To answer the original question posted by Alberto, "Natalia" is the best and most common English language spelling version.  To an English speaker, it would seem weird and or foreign to see Natalia spelled a different way.  So, for our fellow forera, we know that Natalya is probably not American because of how she spells it.  Some also spell it with the "th", but I don't like that at all.  Have you resolved your doubt?


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