BGNPCGN · 1956

Romanization of Arabic (1956)

Authority

bgnpcgn

Year

1956

Source script

Arabic Arab · 160

Destination script

Latin Latn · 215

Language

Arabic

This System was adopted by the BGN in 1946 and by the PCGN in 1956 and is applied by BGN and PCGN in the systematic romanization of Arabic geographical names in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Uniform results in the romanization of Arabic are difficult to obtain, since vowel points and diacritical marks are generally omitted from both handwriting and printed script. It follows that for correct identification of the words which appear in any particular name, knowledge of its standard Arabic-script spelling including proper pointing, and recognition of dialectal and idiosyncratic deviations are essential. In order to bring about uniformity in the Roman-script spelling of geographical names in Arabic-language areas, the system is based insofar as possible on fully pointed Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). In the interest of clarity, vowel pointing to indicate short vowels has been applied to the examples given below, and examples of the, more usual, unpointed script have also been provided; it should also be noted that the dots which occur on some characters of the Arabic script are not vowels but rather are an integral part of the base consonant. Arabic script is written from right to left, and does not make a distinction between upper and lower case.

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