BGN/PCGN romanization

BGN/PCGN romanization are the systems for romanization and Roman-script spelling conventions adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) and the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use (PCGN).

The systems have been approved by the BGN and the PCGN for application to geographic names, but they have also been used for personal names and text in the US and the UK.

Details of all the jointly approved systems are outlined in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency publication Romanization Systems and Policies (2012),^[1] which superseded the BGN 1994 publication Romanization Systems and Roman-Script Spelling Conventions.^[2] Romanization systems and spelling conventions for different languages have been gradually introduced over the course of several years. The currently used set is available on the UK government site.^[3] A complete list of BGN/PCGN systems and agreements covering the following languages is given below (the date of adoption is given in the parentheses). The status "agreement" refers to systems which were created by authorities of the corresponding nations and then adopted by BGN and PCGN.

Systems

In addition to the systems above, BGN/PCGN adopted Roman Script Spelling Conventions for languages that use the Roman alphabet but use letters not present in the English alphabet. These conventions exist for the following four languages:

• BGN/PCGN romanization of Faroese (1968 agreement)
• BGN/PCGN romanization of German (2000 agreement)
• BGN/PCGN romanization of Icelandic (1968 agreement)
• BGN/PCGN romanization of
  Northern Sami^{[note 1]}
  (1984 agreement)

References