So... I'm right? Kovalchuk is the latin alphabet version of that. That's pretty straightforward. It gets confusing with people like me whose names start with J. My old Russian visa has my name spelled with "dzh" in place of "j".
i was just joking around, but if we want to discuss language, technically theres no wrong or right answer. Why? There’s no one standard for transcribing Cyrillic into Latin alphabet.
The biggest example is Ё in Cyrillic. It is either transcribed as either “e” or “yo” depending on the person that does the transcribing. So, two big examples in hockey are Фёдоров (Fedorov) and Семён (Semyon). If you were to write it as Fyodorov and Semen (lol), you wouldnt be wrong.
Taking your case for example, the way j is pronounced in english is approximately equivalent to the letter ж. Transcribing it into latin, you’ll most often see it as “zh”. But it’s also possible you’ll see it as j or even dzh which all approximately sound the same in english (there’s one very famous georgian whose Ж is popularly transcribed as dzh).
It’s pretty confusing. I mean the NHL doesnt even stick to one standard when they transcribe Cyrillic! I’d personally spell it as Kovalchuk which is the common version, but Kovalchuck is not exactly “wrong” either because, in the end, an English person is gonna pronounce both versions the same regardless. The goal of transcription is to transcribe the foreign language in such a way that the person can approximately sound it out.