It is also often used with D (Д) to approximate the sound in English of the Latin letter J with a ДЖ combination.

[1] In the Early Cyrillic alphabet the name of Zhe was живѣтє (živěte), meaning "live" (imperative).

Ж is most often transliterated as the digraph ⟨zh⟩ for English-language readers (as in Doctor Zhivago, Доктор Живаго, or Georgy Zhukov, Георгий Жуков).

The scientific transliteration convention comes from Czech spelling and is also used in the Latin alphabets of several other Slavic languages (Slovak, Sorbian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovene).

Thus, Leonid Brezhnev's surname (Леонид Брежнев) could be transliterated as "Brežnev", as it is spelled in a number of Slavic languages.