The Trouble With Indian Names . The Indian languages use a number of letters that have no equivalents in English and even within India, the way they are represented varies from region to region. I have tried to summarize the common problems of writing and pronouncing the Indian names below.
Indian languages have the concept of long and short consonants.
So, ' sh ' and ' shh ' are different. To avoid the confusion, some people eliminate the ' h 's altogether, as in 'Siva', and 'Srinivasan', which has only added to the diversity of usage. Siva and Shiva are pronounced in the same way, although spelled differently in English. There are four derivatives of the consonants 't' often transliterated as ' th ', ' Th ', 't' , and ' T' The same is true of the consonant ' d' . Add to it, the compound consonants of ' tt' , ' thth' , ' ThTh' , and ' TT' and you are completely stumped.