Check any of Microsoft's stock fonts -- other than your typical font :) these contain localized name strings for dozens of languages, and Greek is usually among them.

Dear Nick,

In current Russian weight nomenclature полужирное corresponds to ‘semibold’ or to ‘demibold’. The Russian for ‘bold’ is жирное. These days the masculine, not the neuter, form is preferred: полужирный, жирный—referring to шрифт 〈m〉 (‘type’), not to начертание 〈n〉 (‘style’, or ‘face’).

Нормальный, not Нормальное .

Nick, I am sure.

Russian/Soviet typographic nomenclature was a calque from German. So the next weight up from the Regular was always poluzhirnyi (halbfett), not zhirnyi (fett). The zhirnyi was kept for what the English-speaking typographers would call ‘extrabold’. To add to the confusion, the Regular weight was called svetlyi, ‘light’.

Take a look at the official description of Severnaya typeface, dated 1971. It was available in three versions: С1: Прямое нормальное светлое (‘Upright Regular Light’), С/1: Курсивное нормальное светлое (‘Italic Regular light’), and С3: Прямое нормальное полужирное (‘Upright Regular Demibold’); the latter was, in fact, the Bold.

Now compare it with a relatively recent announcement of a new digital typeface, Susan, by Manvel Shmavonian (ParaType, 2007). It is offered in 4 versions: Нормальное, Наклонное, Жирное, and Жирное наклонное (Regular, Oblique, Bold, and Bold Oblique).

I remember the German and the Hungarian compositors who worked for my company confused by the typographic mark-up done by our copy-preparers who always called Monotype Series 334 Таймс полужирный (Times Demi-bold), and the typesetters thought they wanted Series 421 (Times Semi-bold) which was not, and is still not, available in Cyrillic…

To answer your last question. Lebedev uses the old Soviet weight designations, slightly updated (the Regular is no longer called svetloye but normalnoye). Both he and ParaType use the neuter, not masculine, form.

As to the traditional German weight nomenclature, I vaguely remember that in one of the older threads Erik Spiekermann provided very enlightening comments on all those confusing designations, like dreiviertelfett, kräftig, schwer, and the like.

Why then are you recommending the masculine form as being preferred these days?

Because the gender agreement between the adjective determinans (the style) and the noun determinatum (shrift, the name of the typeface)—often assumed—makes sense.

The examples of such usage are many, e.g., Латинский светлый, Академический полужирный узкий, Елизаветинский курсив, Альдине полужирный курсив, Коринна светлый и полужирный, Узкий Тонкий Гротеск, etc. Designations like Латинский 〈m〉 жирное 〈n〉, or Академический 〈m〉 полужирное узкое 〈n〉 look, and are, really odd.

ParaType and Lebedev are, AFAIK, the most prominent Russian online font stores.

Cannot tell for Lebedev, but ParaType is indeed very prominent.

@Nick Shinn:

Given Maxim's initial explanation,

These days the masculine, not the neuter, form is preferred: полужирный, жирный—referring to шрифт 〈m〉 (‘type’), not to начертание 〈n〉 (‘style’, or ‘face’).

which makes a lot of sense to me, there is no contradiction between the masculine form being generally preferred nowadays and some foundries using the neuter form.

If you use the masculine form, you're saying that it is the "shrift" that is bold or italic - here's a bold Arial, there's an italic Arial. If you use the neuter form, you're saying that it's the weight of the typeface to which the attribute applies: here's Arial in a bold weight, here's Arial in an italic weight.

So, even if masculine is more popular in this age of Microsoft Word, the neuter may be more typographically correct - which would explain ParaType et al bucking the trend.

So now you can make an intelligent choice of which gender to use, based on what you want to say.

À propos of полужирный. I have found that thread of February 2006 where the differences between the English and the German weight designations were discussed.

I'd be inclined, following John's explanation, to use the neuter form when describing style or weight of a typeface, and the masculine form if the designation forms part of the name of a typeface. So 'Gill Sans bold' (neuter) but 'Gill Ultra' (masculine).

The Gill example may be confusing, because in digital fonts the typeface that was often labelled in specimens as 'Gill Ultra' is packaged as 'Gill Sans Ultra Bold'. I was looking for an example of a typeface whose actual name includes an adjective. Fette Fraktur might be a better example.

The alternative would be to make all parts of the font name masculine, regardless of whether they are part of the typeface name or merely weight/style descriptors. That would be fine, I suppose, in that it would result in naming as ambiguous as in English. :)

I guess it’s like the situation with Regular/Normal/Book in English.

In fact, all 42 occurrences of Обычный I found in /library/fonts as well as the 14 occurrences in /library/fonts/microsoft have "Regular" as the corresponding English (US) SubFamily name; as for AlBayan (an Arabic font) said to be "Прямой" , in is "Plain" in English (US), "Standard" in German, "Normaal" in Dutch, "Simple" in French and Spanish etc.

In fact, all 42 occurrences of Обычный I found in /library/fonts< as well as the 14 occurrences in /library/fonts/microsoft have "Regular" as the corresponding English (US) SubFamily name […]

FWIW. The significations of those descriptors may overlap a great deal. But if we look for what sets them apart, here are some of their distinctive meanings:

обычный ≈ usual
обыкновенный ≈ plain
прямой ≈ upright
нормальный ≈ normal
регулярный ≈ orderly
простой ≈ simple

Monday, 1 October 2012, 07h30 p.m. EST: