# Serge/Sergie Rachmaninoff/Rachmaninov



## trojan-rabbit

There's so many ways to say and spell his name  Does anyone know what it was officially?


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## Ephemerid

His actual name would've been in Cyrillic (I think?) so its all transliteration anyway. Likewise this would go for Stravinski/Stravinsky/Strawinski (that one is a German transliteration I think?)... Profofiev/Prokofieff... Dostoevski/Dostoevsky... Tolstoi/Tolstoy etc. I'm not sure what determines the different ways of transliterating Russian words & names into the western European alphabet, but its probably some sort of system like how Chinese has two systems of transliteration, Wales-Giles and Pinyin. 

So I guess there is no official way, though I guess if there are two (or more?) transliteration systems for Cyrillic you'd have to be consistent? 

~josh


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## Ephemerid

ACK! Its a lot more complicated than I thought! LOL

~josh


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## trojan-rabbit

Wow....  


I'll just stick with Rachmaninoff


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## Ephemerid

PUT IT BACK IN THE BOX!!! LOL

~josh


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## Mr Salek

i think it depends on tha language you're using: german or english.
if you are familiar with phonetics in both languages, you'll notice that rachmaninov and rachmaninoff, shostakovich and schostakowitsch and tchaikovsky and tschaikowski all read the same.


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## artisan

Well, I do know that in German, a w makes a v sound... 
Actually, I used to speak Pennsylvania Dutch fluently, but I have forgotten most of it now. Pennsylvania Dutch has a lot of english mixed in with it anyway.


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