The decision about what system of transliteration to use with Jewish surnames originally in Polish, Russian, Hebrew, and Yiddish is always a delicate balance. The challenge is further complicated by the fact that in this Yizkor book the names were already translated once – from their original form into Hebrew. In the case of Demidovka, there is yet another challenge – this area is on the border of other regions where alternate spellings would have been commonly used. Because the goal is to make the file the most accessible and useful for the researcher who is not familiar with Hebrew or Slavic languages, different versions of the potential original spellings are provided – and sometimes alternatives are necessary because it is not always possible to know from the Hebrew what is THE definitive name.