Faux Cyrillic

Faux Cyrillic, pseudo-Cyrillic, pseudo-Russian or faux Russian typography is the use of Cyrillic letters in Latin text to evoke the Soviet Union or Russia. It is a type of mimicry typeface.

This is a common Western trope used in book covers, film titles, comic book lettering, artwork for computer games, or product packaging which are set in or wish to evoke Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, or the Russian Federation. An early example was the logo for Norman Jewison's film The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming and more recently the logo for Sacha Baron Cohen's film Borat. In the music industry, the Simple Minds album Empires and Dance and the Spandau Ballet album Journeys to Glory, both 1981, provide examples in the cover artwork (the former with reversed Rs and Ns yielding Я and И, the latter with Д and Ф replacing A and O, respectively).

Letters are substituted regardless of phonetic matching. For example, R and N in RUSSIAN may be replaced by Cyrillic Я and И, giving "ЯUSSIAИ". Other examples include Ш for W, Ц for U, Я/Г for R/backwards and upside-down L, Ф for O, Д for A, Б, Ь, or Ъ for B/b, З, Э, or Ё for E, Ч or У for Y. Outside the Russian alphabet, Џ (Yugoslavian) can act as a substitute for U, Ғ (USSR Turkic languages) for F, Ә (USSR Turkic languages) or Є (Ukrainian) for E, Ө (USSR Turkic languages) for O, Һ (Some USSR Turkic languages) for H, Ћ (Yugoslavian) for Th and the symbol ☭ for G.

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