The Palladius transcription system

The Palladius system is a system for writing Chinese words in Cyrillic. It is Russia’s official system for Chinese personal and geographical names. Created in 1839 by the renowned Sinologist Archimandrite Iakinf (secular name N. Ya. Bichurin), it was established through its use in the «Complete Chinese-Russian Dictionary» (Beijing, 1888) by Archimandrite Palladius (P. I. Kafarov) and P. S. Popov, hence its name. It survives with only minor changes.

Basic principles:

• If, in two adjacent syllables of a word, the first ends in -н and the next begins with a vowel, a separating ъ is inserted, for example: 长安 Чанъань, 朋友 пэнъю. Syllables ending in Pinyin -ng end in -н in Palladius (Shanghai — Шанхай). Syllables ending in Pinyin -n end in -нь in Palladius (Shaolin — Шаолинь).
• The syllable hui is pronounced [xuəi], represented in Cyrillic as хуэй (e.g. хуэйцзу) and also avoids an unpleasant Russian association. Some place names use the variant хой (e.g. Аньхой). Some authors incorrectly transliterate Pinyin literally, producing variants: 安徽 Аньхой — Аньхуй, 回族 Хуэйцзу — Хуйцзу. The syllable хуэй (hui) can represent Chinese surnames, given names (e.g. 辉 Huī) or parts of them. It also names an ethnic group (回 Huí, also хуэйцзу; see Dungans) and a Chinese language/dialect, Hui (徽 Huī).
• Russian scholarly and literary publications often use alternative spellings of the following syllables in proper names and terminology: мэн — мын, мэнь — мынь, фэн — фын, фэнь — фынь, пэн — пын. Historians of Russian and Soviet Sinology explain this as a disagreement between the Moscow and St. Petersburg (Leningrad) schools, although spellings with э have been preferred since the 1950s.

There are numerous exceptions to the transliteration rules, including: Пекин, Харбин, Нанкин, Сунь Ят-сен. Such exceptions reflect established historical usage.

The «Chinese in Russian» website’sChinese syllable table gives Cyrillic readings according to Palladius in its second column (headed «цзы»).