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

[pne.livejournal.com]

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