Context is your friend

[pne]

A while back, I asked Swetlana at work how to spell "Natalya" in Russian.

"With a soft sign," she answered, and hit the mark—she understood that my question was whether the spelling was "Наталя", "Наталья", or "Наталия", so she provided me with what differentiated between those, rather than spelling out the entire name.

Context is your friend, and saves you from providing more information than necessary.

Comments

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

Yeah, without the ь, you end with something akin to "Natal'a". And putting in the и would make me want to stress it, for some reason.

Soft sign it is :D

[timwi.livejournal.com]

С мягким знаком! :)

[pne.livejournal.com]

If you want to nitpick, her answer was "Mit Weichheitszeichen" :)