For many foreigners the Latinised spellings for Belarusian places and names continue to present real difficulties or just appear unpronounceable.

Belarusians themselves feel annoyed about the ways their names are transliterated from Cyrillic into Latin script. It has become even more complicated with Belarus having two official languages – Belarusian and Russian.

Some people transliterate proper names in accordance with the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s or the Belarusian Academy of Sciences' standards, which was recently adopted by the United Nations. Most people and the media, however, are inconsistent when switching from one version to another. Despite the various approaches, one thing is clear – if one respects Belarusian identity, it is important to transliterate Belarusian names from the Belarusian language.