Romanization of Greek


Romanization of Greek is the transliteration or transcription of text from the Greek alphabet into the Latin alphabet. The conventions for writing and romanizing Ancient Greek and Modern Greek differ markedly, which can create confusion. The sound of the English letter B was written as β in ancient Greek but is now written as the digraph Greek orthography#Digraphs and diphthongs, while the modern β sounds like the English letter V instead. The Greek name Ἰωάννης became Johannes in Latin and then John in English, but in modern Greek has become Γιάννης; 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 Άγιος might variously appear as Hagiοs, Agios, Aghios, or Ayios, or simply be translated as "Holy" or "Saint" in English forms of Greek placenames.
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 chi as and heta as and used variant forms of Λ and Σ 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⟩ and ⟨u⟩. Aspirated consonants like ⟨θ⟩, ⟨φ⟩, initial-⟨ρ⟩, and ⟨χ⟩ simply wrote out the sound: ⟨th⟩, ⟨ph⟩, ⟨rh⟩, and ⟨ch⟩. Because English orthography 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⟩. Modern scholars also increasingly render ⟨χ⟩ as ⟨kh⟩.
The sounds of Modern Greek 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 issued its system in cooperation with the International Organization for Standardization in 1983. This system was adopted by the United Nations' Fifth Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names at Montreal in 1987, by the United Kingdom's Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use and by the United States' Board on Geographic Names in 1996, and by the ISO itself in 1997. Romanization of names for official purposes were required to use the ELOT system within Greece until 2011, when a legal decision permitted Greeks to use irregular forms provided that official identification and documents also list the standard forms. Other romanization systems still encountered are the BGN/PCGN's earlier 1962 system and the system employed by the American Library Association and the United States' Library of Congress.
"Greeklish" has also spread within Greece itself, owing to the rapid spread of digital telephony from cultures using the Latin alphabet. Since Greek typefaces and fonts 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 θέλω, "3ava" for ξανά, and "yuxi" for ψυχή.

Tables

The following tables list several romanization schemes from the Greek alphabet to modern English. For the romanization of Greek into other languages, see the corresponding articles in our sister wikis, such as ":fr:Romanisation du grec|Romanisation du grec" on the :fr:Wikipédia:Accueil principal|French Wikipedia. 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.

Ancient Greek

The American Library Association and Library of Congress romanization scheme employs its "Ancient or Medieval Greek" system for all works and authors up to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, although Byzantine Greek 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, ᾤ—see also the [|section on romanizing Greek diacritical marks] below.
GreekClassical
alphaaaA
Greek orthography#Digraphs and diphthongsaeaiAI
betabbB
gammaggG
gammaG
delta ddD
epsiloneeE
Greek orthography#Digraphs and diphthongse or ieiEI
zetazzZ
etaeēH
thetaththQ
iotaiiI
kappackK
lambdallL
mu mmM
nu nnN
xi xxC
omicronooO
Greek orthography#Digraphs and diphthongsoeoiOI
Greek orthography#Digraphs and diphthongsuouOU
Greek orthography#Digraphs and diphthongsoouOU
pi ppP
rhoR
rhorrR
medial sigmassS / S1
final sigmassS / S2 / J
tauttT
upsilonyyU
upsilonU
Greek orthography#Digraphs and diphthongsui or yiuiUI
phiphphF
khichchX
psi pspsY
omegaoōW

Modern Greek

The ISO, UN, and Greek, British, and American governments have all approved an essentially equivalent standard for transcription of Modern Greek into Latin letters; there remain minor differences in how they approach reversible transliteration. The American Library Association and Library of Congress romanization scheme employs its "Modern Greek" system for all works and authors following the Fall of Constantinople 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, ϊ—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 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 and the diaeresis.
When a Greek diphthong 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 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.
Apart from the diacritical marks native to Greek itself or used to romanize its characters, linguists also regularly mark vowel length with macrons marking long vowels and rounded breves marking short vowels. 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.

Numerals

Greece's early Attic numerals were based on a small sample of letters arranged in multiples of 5 and 10, likely forming the inspiration for the later Etruscan and Roman numerals.
This early system was replaced by Greek numerals which employed the entire alphabet, including the [|nonstandard letters digamma], [|stigma], or sigma-tau, [|koppa], and [|sampi]. As revised in 2001, ELOT 743 provides for the uncommon characters to be given 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.
These values are traditionally romanized as Roman numerals, so that Αλέξανδρος Γ' ο Μακεδών 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 which employ these numerals, however, are to be formally romanized using "decimal" Arabic numerals.

Punctuation marks

Ancient Greek text did not mark word division with spaces or interpuncts, instead running the words together. In the Hellenistic period, a variety of symbols arose for punctuation or editorial marking; such punctuation 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 erotimatiko, which is shaped like the Latinate semicolon. Greek punctuation which has been given formal romanizations include:
Greek

Name
; ??
. ..full stop
· ;;
: ::colon
, ,,comma
! !exclamation point
’ ''apostrophe
‿
͜		--papyrological hyphen

Uncommon letters

There are many archaic forms and local variants of the Greek alphabet. Beta, for example, might appear as round Β or pointed throughout Greece but is also found in the forms , and , , , , , and even . 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 Pi #Variant pi and for π, Greek ligatures for στ, and Greek ligatures for Greek ligatures—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 but are too uncommon to be listed in formal transliteration schemes.
Uncommon Greek letters which have been given formal romanizations include: