Some of the names have apostrophes
It is significant. Such apostrophes stands for "soft sign" - unpronounceable symbol for softening the last "meaning" letter.
I'm not a linguist, but I'll try to explain.
Let us look to two Chinese names: Lao and Lyao.
First "L" is pronounced "hard" as in "help", and second one - as in "million" - "miljən"
Similar thing we can see in some Russian words, including proper names. For example, two very similar names: `Igor' and Eg`or. The latter pronounced "hard", as it written. But first ends with "softened r", like "Igoree", but without ending "ee".
Do not try to read transliterated Russian names according the rules of English alphabet, they could be read much correctly according Germanic, "harder" rules: not "aigour" and "eyegour", but "igor' " and "yegor". Exception is for some specific sounds like "sh" as in "shoes" and "ch" as in "chapter".
The "y" in the middle of the word replaces sound of "ы", closed and dull variation of "ee". Nearest example is "Chernobyl' " or "i" in "thick". At the end of the word the same character replaces a digraphic suffix of "ый" - "yj", like in surname of Roman Polansky.