In a hurry?

Here’s the rule for English speakers:

  1. Armin Bagrat Stepanyan is my preferred spelling and pronunciation.
  2. Armins Bagrats Stepanjans is the legal spelling. If you see this version of my name, just pronounce it as you would (1.).

That’s it. Bye-bye busy bee!

But why?

The Jurmala Citizenship and Immigration Affairs Department gifted me the two English versions of my name. Latvian uses the Latin alphabet (+ diacritics). English uses the Latin alphabet (w/o diacritics). Because of this, linguistically careless passport clerks transliterate Latvian names into English by just dropping the diacritical marks. That’s how we got to English version (2.) of my name. Version (1.) is just my preferred transliteration.

The difference between (1.) and (2.) captures a surprising amount of linguistic nuance in just 4 bytes of information.

The s’s: Latvian is case-rich language. That means we change our nouns depending on the role they play in a sentence. That’s similar to how you’d add a possessive ‘s in English. In English there are just 2 cases for nouns (and 3 for pronouns). In Latvian, we have 7 cases for nouns. In the default (nominative) case (for male-gendered words) we add an “s” at the end of them.

The “s” is not always there. For example, the equivalent of Armin’s in Latvian is Armīnam.

The j/y alternation: both of these spellings refer to the same sound – the palatal approximant /j/.

In English this sound is normally spelled using “y”, as in: “yoink”, “yeet”, “yacht”. Whereas “j” normally refers to the postalveolar affricate /dʒ/. That’s “jazz”, “jiber-jabber”, “juxtapose”.

For the culturally adventurous

From time to time a person cares sufficiently to ask:

How do I pronounce your name in Latvian?

The short answer: don’t bother!

This is just asking for trouble. Latvian language’s rich case structure (see the discussion of s’s above) means that a perfectly articulated Armīns will sound off in most sentences. It probably should’ve been Armīnu, Armīnam, or Armīn! instead.

I want you to pronounce my name in your language!

Chinese: 爱敏

English: Armin

Latvian: Armīns

Russian: Армин

Ukranian: Армін

Want me to include an additional language? I’d love to hear from you, shoot me an email!