Transliteration mystification

From the Wikipedia page on Pafnuty Chebyshev:

The surname Chebyshev has been transliterated in several different ways, including Tchebichef, Tchebychev, Tchebycheff, Tschebyschev, Tschebyschef, Tschebyscheff, Čebyčev, Čebyšev, Chebysheff, Chebychov and Chebyshov (which provides the closest pronunciation in English to the correct pronunciation in old Russian). Chebychev is an erroneous mixture between English and French transliterations. In English, the transliteration Chebyshev has gained widespread acceptance. The correct transliteration according to ISO 9 is Čebyšëv. The American Mathematical Society adopted the transcription Chebyshev in its Mathematical Reviews.

A count of 14 seems on the high side for the description "in several different ways".

I believe this is the densest thicket of transliterations I've ever encountered, though internet search does the right thing with all the variants I've tried, e.g. Čebyšëv polynomials.

What reminded me of the problem:

At the stage of rewriting some inherited lecture notes at which I need to (a) pick a transcription of Чебышёв and (b) explain to the students where else in an index they might have to look.

— New-Cleckit Dominie (@ncdominie.bsky.social) August 19, 2026 at 6:00 AM

I've always used "Chebyshev" in my own lecture notes without giving it a second thought, e.g. here, though my usage is banal enough that I doubt many readers feel the need to investigate beyond the hyperlink that I provide. And anyhow, few students these days are likely to use a paper-book index, rather than internet search.

Update — For a real example of transliterational mystification, at least as it used to be, see Victor Mair's 2017 post "Sinological suffering".

Update #2 — A common source of transliteration confusion is what happens when a surname passes through several languages with different orthographic systems, as well as also several dialects with different pronunciations. For example, my mother's family name is "Yoffe" in its U.S. version, apparently assigned on Ellis Island when her (Russian) parents immigrated in 1921. Other latin-character variants include "Ioffe", "Joffe", "Yaffe", "Jaffe", "Jaffee". All of them come from Hebrew יפה,  perhaps filtered through Cyrillic Ио́ффе.