Joel Hill wrote:

>How come most records use the "off" ending, but most search engines don't
>work unless you use the "ov" ending? Maybe someone with a Russian
>background can explain.

Rachmaninoff in Russian is spelled with the terminal letter that
corresponds to our "v".  However, the terminal "v" is pronounced like a
double "f" in Russian.  Hence the frequent transliteration "Rachmaninoff",
which may have been the transliteration that the composer preferred.

Walter Meyer

 [I've standardized on Rachmaninoff at Classical Net because that's the
 way he signed his own name in English, and you can't get more definitive
 than that, IMHO.  -Dave]