If a radical departure from past usage is perhaps too objectionable to many, this much could be done at present to greatly reduce the list of exceptions, leaving it to the future to smooth over the remaining cases: let all names which are now written but slightly different from their national form and which are easily recognized in the latter form, be corrected, and extirpate all gross corruptions. Also lessen the number of exceptions in those foreign names which are readily understood when written in accordance with the adopted phonetic rules: as Kalkutta for Calcutta, Mekka for Mecca, Kutch for Cutch, Selebes for Celebes, Bonni for Bonny, etc.
Another notable agreement in the British, French and German Hydrographic Office systems is found in their declarations in regard to diacritical marks in the writing of foreign geographic names. The British say that a system which would attempt to represent the more delicate inflections of sound and accent would become so complicated as to defeat itself. They therefore recommend only the use of the acute accent to denote the syllable on which stress should be laid. The German Hydrographic Office has adopted the same view. The French Commission in its deliberations expressed decided opposition to the adoption of Lepsius' or any similar system, and finally adopted besides the "tilde" and "créma," only the accent "circonflex" and the "apostrophe," signs of which the two last are ordinarily employed in the writing of the French language. "In our country," the French commission says, "a native of the Normandy and one of the Provence do not employ exactly the same sounds in pronouncing, for instance, Marseille, Enghien, or Montrichard, and, in foreign lands, we find still greater diversity in this respect." Therefore, we should use diacritical marks with the greatest economy, and only when they are indispensable.
It is of course not to be expected that a certain school of geographers, who are in favor of the strict application to geographic names of a simplified form of Lepsius' standard alphabet, will acquiesce in this view, but it is to be hoped that all practical minded geographers will agree to reserve the extended use of diacritical alphabets for purely linguistic literature only.
In the meanwhile, the United States has not been idle, and the Hydrographer, Captain Henry F. Picking, U. S. N., has taken the initiative by the appointment of a board to consider and report a system of orthography for foreign geographic names for guidance in the compilation of the Hydrographic Office charts, sailing directions and notices to mariners, which as we know cover all parts of the world.
The Hydrographic Office, by its daily experience with the subject matter, is thus peculiarly fitted to inaugurate a reform, and it is hoped that the board, profiting by what the British, French and Germans have already done, will report rules, that may become generally satisfactory to American geographers.
In our own country the territory of Alaska needs special attention in regard to settling the orthography of its geographic names of Russian origin. Russian names have always been more or less of a bugbear in geographic literature, since so great a number of them appear in different forms. The difficulties of transcribing Russian names so as to reproduce the correct pronunciation are well enough understood. In the first place the Russian alphabet contains 36 letters, of which 12 are vowels and diphthongs, 3 are semi-vowels, and the balance, consonants. In this alphabet, there are 12 elements which have no exact equivalents in the English alphabet, and, on the other hand, there are 4 English sounds (j, w, x and h) not represented in the Russian alphabet. Hence, whatever system is employed, we can only hope to give the pronunciation approximately. Many of the Russian names found to-day in English and American maps and publications show, by the way in which they are rendered, an utter absence of knowledge of the grammatical construction of Russian on the part of those who originally transcribed them. There are few other languages in which case and gender play such an important part in the terminal inflections of proper names as in this great Slavonic idiom. Any one not conversant with the Russian declensions should not, therefore, attempt to transcribe Russian geographic names into English, as he will be sure to blunder. On Russian maps, for instance; Behring Strait reads, "Beringov Proliv;" Behring Sea, "Beringovo More;" Kamchatka Bay, "Zaliv Kamchatkii;" Herald Island, "Ostrova Gheralda;" etc.
By the by, I cannot exactly understand why the spelling of the name of Behring should, within the last few years, have been changed on American and English maps to Bering. The navigator of this name, Veit Behring, was a native of Germany, in the service of Russia, and it is safe to say that his name contained the letter h. Naturally, in transcribing his name into Russian, the h had to drop out, as that letter is missing in the Russian alphabet.
The excellent system of transcribing Russian names into English, published in a recent number of Nature1 having already been accepted by English and American representatives of various scientific institutions, it is greatly to be desired that English and American geographic societies should express their views of it at an early day. The system is easily brought in harmony with the general principles adopted by the Royal Geographical Society, by a simple declaration in regard to the diacritical marks by which, mainly for the purpose of facilitating correct re-transliteration of Russian names, the vowels i, i [with macron], i [with breve], e and é and the silent semi-vowels are sought to be distinguished in the written names. For the benefit of those unacquainted with the system of transliterating Russian, published in Nature, it is reprinted at the close of this paper.
1 February 27, 1890.
A few words more in regard to the treatment of the Russian geographic names found in Alaska. This territory will in the course of time contain a large English-speaking population, and its geographic names of Russian and Eskimo origin should, in a certain sense, no longer be classed by us under the category of foreign names.