How Kharkiv is spelled in English
The question comes up whenever a form has to be filled in: an order from abroad, a parcel, a CV, a bank application, visa paperwork. Getting the city wrong is expensive, because a shipment can travel to the wrong place or stall at sorting. Below is where the competing spellings came from and which one is genuinely official.
The spellings and where they came from
| Spelling | Where it came from | Where it is used |
|---|---|---|
| Kharkiv | romanisation of the Ukrainian name Харків | documents, post, maps, international databases, English-language media |
| Kharkov | romanisation of the Russian form Харьков | sources predating 1991 and legacy databases, outdated in new documents |
| Charkiv, Charkiw | Italian and German conventions, where ch stands for the [x] sound | texts in those languages; wrong for English and for Ukrainian paperwork |
| Harkiv, Harkov | a shortcut that drops the kh digraph | nowhere: English readers mistake these for Polish place names |
Writing an address with Kharkiv in it
An English-language address runs from the specific to the general: the person first, then the street, then the city, the postcode and the country. Street names are transliterated rather than translated, and the Ukrainian word for street is shortened to St or written out as Street. The full line-by-line formats sit in a separate guide: a Ukrainian address in English.
The country goes on the last line in capitals when the item crosses a border, so that the sorting centre sees it at once. The oblast is added only when the settlement is small enough to be hard to find without it.
Transliteration and transcription are not the same thing
Transliteration maps the letters of one writing system onto another: every character or cluster gets a counterpart. That is how Харків becomes Kharkiv and Львів becomes Lviv. The swap is mechanical and owes nothing to how the word sounds.
Transcription records the sound instead of the spelling, using phonetic symbols. For an English reader the pronunciation is written roughly as [ˈkɑːrkiv]. Documents never use transcription; it belongs to dictionaries and to anyone practising the pronunciation.
What the official rules say
A single system for rendering Ukrainian in Latin script was approved by Resolution No. 55 of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, dated 27 January 2010. It governs passports, place names, maps, signage and street signs. Under it the Ukrainian letter х becomes kh and і becomes i, which leaves Kharkiv as the only correct form.
The system was recognised outside Ukraine as well. The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names endorsed it in 2012, and in 2019 the United States Board on Geographic Names and its British counterpart PCGN adopted it in place of their 1965 rules. The Library of Congress system yields the same form.
Kharkiv Oblast in English
Official texts use Kharkiv Oblast, freer writing uses Kharkiv Region. Kharkov region is as outdated as the Russian spelling of the city.
Spelling, addresses and old paperwork
The city is spelled the same way everywhere, but the rest of an English document still needs decisions. The capital follows the same rule and attracts far more argument: Kyiv in English. Kharkiv is also where our own story started, in a classroom on Rymarska Street: how it began. If you would rather work on the language itself than on one place name at a time, start with the online level test or look at our general English programme for adults.