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Where versions of names converted from non-roman scripts are widely recognized, they are adhered to: for instance, the spelling Mecca is used rather than Makkah, even though the latter is more exact. Likewise, the renowned sultan of Zanzibar in the second half of the nineteenth century should strictly be entitled al-Sayyid Sa’id, but his name was always ‘Europeanised’ as Seyyid Said. For other transliterations from Arabic the Encyclopaedia of Islam is generally followed, but without diacritical marks. With Chinese names the modern pinyin romanization has been adopted – so that the admiral formerly known in English as Cheng Ho appears as Zheng He. Most prefixes to root words in African languages are omitted for simplicity’s sake.

Portuguese monarchs and princes are, in the main, referred to by the familiar anglicized versions of their names. Lesser beings are left in the original.

Geographical terms accord as far as possible with those in use at the times being written about. Thus Ceylon describes the island which became Sri Lanka in 1972. There is often a wide divergence between early European attempts at Indian names and those employed today; an example is Calicut, the once renowned port which appears on modern maps as Kozhikode.