Abstract: The Chinese translation of geographic names has been arbitrary and confusing. The Qin Dynasty's unification of writing was based on script while traditional translation of geographic names has been based on speech. According to the need in usage, United Nations standardized the Romanization of geographical names on the basis of provided script rather than speech. The author discussed the benefits of using Pinyin as well as Pinyin initials in the inputting and indexing of Chinese geographic names. With the naturalization of the Roman alphabet in the Chinese writing system, one can expect the reduced need of using Chinese characters in the creation of new geographic information keys.

Key words: translation of geographic names, alphabetic language, phonetic language, Pinyin sorting, the standardized Romanization of geographic names, unified text