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To persons used to seeing Tamil proper names romanized as they commonly are in English, the name forms used in this catalog
may appear strange. They are in the Library of Congress (LC) romanization. This note will explain a little about this romanization
and LC's use of names, to help users find authors and other names they are searching for. It should be noted that in all the
examples, diacritics are omitted, just as they are currently in the catalog. Diacritics are an essential part of the LC romanization,
but they are largely irrelevant to searching in this and other systems. The Library of Congress romanization is a variant of that used in the Tamil Lexicon published by the University of Madras.
One roman letter with its diacritics, if any, always represents a single Tamil letter, regardless of pronunciation. Thus the
roman character c represents a Tamil letter that may be pronounced as s, ch, or j in different
words, and likewise the roman letter k stands for a character that may be k, h, or g. The Library of Congress also has a policy of using only one name for an author. This is called the "established form."
Other possible forms are cross-referenced. Unfortunately, this catalog does not have cross references (in future these will
be available), so you must use LC's established form. One way to find this entry form is to look up the author in your library's
catalog, if you are at an American institution. Otherwise, try different forms of the name. Since RMRL has not completed cataloging,
it is possible that variant forms might be used for a single author. Example: Bharati, Shuddhananda, is the established form of an author. Variant entries might include: Shuddhananda Bharati;
Cuttananta Parati; Bharati, Suddhananda; and so forth. Some principles: If an author has written only in Tamil, the romanized form of his Tamil name is likely to be used. If
a person is already well known in the English-speaking world by one form, that form will be used (e.g., Rajagopalachari, C.
(Chakravarty)). LC rules call for using the last element in a name as if it were a surname, with few exceptions. Below are some examples where the commonly used English spellings of names differ from LC romanization. Even though the
straight romanized form may not be the established form, it may still appear in titles, e.g. Makatma Kanti, where the established
form is Gandhi, Mahatma, 1969-1948. ("*" indicates LC established form.)
This table was drawn from ALA-LC romanization tables: transliteration schemes for non-roman scripts, compiled and
edited by Randall K. Barry. Washington: Library of Congress, 1991.
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