Standard Ukrainian has been written with the Cyrillic script in a tradition going back to the introduction of Christianity and Old Church Slavonic to Kievan Rus'.

The Mozilla Add-ons website published the Ukrajinsjka Latynka extension to transliterate Ukrainian texts from Cyrillic to Latin script on web pages.

Czech politician Josef Jireček took an interest in this concept and managed to gain support for the project in the Imperial Ministry of Interior.

As part of a Polonization campaign in Galicia during the period of neo-absolutist rule after 1849, Viceroy Agenor Gołuchowski attempted to impose this Latin alphabet on Ukrainian publications in 1859.

[5][6] This modified earlier laws and brought together a unified system for official documents, publication of cartographic works, signs and indicators of inhabited localities, streets, stops, subway stations, etc.

The 27th session of the UN Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN), held in New York on 30 July and 10 August 2012, approved the Ukrainian system of romanization.

[12] As example, the Introduction of Josyp Łozynśkyj's Ruskoje Wesile ('Ruthenian Wedding', 1834): Josef Jireček proposed an alphabet based more closely on Czech orthography (except some letters like ć, ń, ś, ź).