IIHF is making a serious push to reform the spelling and presentation of Russian player names around the hockey world -- and on Google.

From the IIHF:

Q: So what has been wrong with how the names were transcribed until 2010?

A: Simply, the English transcription didn't reflect how Russians really pronounce their names. And this is the whole point of transcription -- to write Russian names with Roman letters so it comes as close as possible to the original pronunciation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Q: Can you give some examples of that?

A: Take a name like Fyodor. It most places it was "Fedor" which is wrong. The Pittsburgh Penguins star Malkin's first name must be spelled Yevgeni and not "Evgeni" or "Evgeny". Very few Russian first names start with an "E-sound". Two examples are Enver and Eduard. The first sound in the original spelling of Malkin's first name is Cyrillic "E", which looks like the Roman "E" but is pronounced "Ye". Thus: Yevgeni.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are three years away from the first Olympic hockey tournaments in Russia. We felt that come Sochi 2014, the names of the hosting country should be transcribed correctly. It's long overdue already.

 

 

The IIHF worked together with the Slavic faculty of the University of Zurich and its professor in Russian language on standardizing names.

The same rule was used for players from Belarus and Kazakhstan. A different standard will be used for the Ukrainian language. Forwards Semyon Valuiski and Artyom Voronin are the two examples of the new transcription.

Here's the IIHF transcription guide :