Time Zone abbreviations in Brazil

Infoman Inc. mpereira at istar.ca
Tue Jul 6 21:25:33 UTC 1999


Paul,

Reinaldo Goulart, a businessman in San Paulo, and active in the railroad
sector (thus somewhat knowledgeable about Brazilian "time zones" replied to
me e-mail for some information as follows:

" It is difficult to answer this apparently simple question. This is because
the subject of time zones is currently a matter of dicussion/debate in
Brazil. Let's say that "the Brasilia time" is considered the "official time"
because Brasilia is the capital city. The other three time zones are called
"Brasilia time "minus one" or "plus one" or "plus two". As far as I know
there is no such name/designation as "Eastern Time" or "Central Time". The
mess is worst during summer when DST is called summer time but some states
do not change the time. At present, we do not know how many "time zones", we
have.."

Regards - Jake Knoppers

P.S. Perhaps someone else has a contact in Brasil who may readily have
available more info, i.e. the need for a standardizaed systematic approach
before getiing into Englsih/Portuguese language names/abbreviation
equivalents.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Eggert [mailto:eggert at twinsun.com]
> Sent: June 27, 1999 4:00 AM
> To: dcs at newsguy.com
> Cc: tz at elsie.nci.nih.gov
> Subject: Time Zone abbreviations in Brazil
>
>
>    From:	Daniel C. Sobral [SMTP:dcs at newsguy.com]
>    Sent:	Wednesday, February 03, 1999 8:18 AM
>    To:	tz at elsie.nci.nih.gov
>
>    I'd like to point out that what you call "Zone America/Sao_Paulo",
>    the brazilian "legal time", is actually known as _Brasilia_ time
>    zone in Brazil.
>
> The Zone labels are largely independent of what people call time time
> zones; they merely name the most populous location that uses that
> particular rule set.  (It may seem a bit odd at first that the
> `America/Sao_Paulo' label identifies Brasilia time, but
> `America/Los_Angeles' identifies Pacific time, so it's just as odd for
> me.  :-)
>
> However, it sounds like the abbreviations used in the Brazilian rules
> are incorrect.  These abbreviations, shown below, are purely our
> invention.  I'd like to fix them so that they abbreviate the English
> translations of the names actually in use in Brazil.
>
> #	-2:00	FST	FDT	Fernando de Noronha
> #	-3:00	EST	EDT	Eastern Brazil
> #	-4:00	WST	WDT	Western Brazil
> #	-5:00	AST	ADT	Acre
>
> If the people in Brazil call it `Brasilia time', then the abbreviation
> should be fixed to reflect this.  In another message you wrote that
> people use the Portuguese equivalent of `Brasilia time' and `Brasilia
> summer time' (the UK style), as opposed to the US style that the tz
> tables are currently using.  So I suppose the abbreviations should be
> changed from EST and EDT to BRT and BRST (for `Brasilia Time' and
> `Brasilia Summer Time').
>
> What names do Brazilians use for the time zones other than Brasilia?
>
> (Sorry I took so long to answer; I've been swamped.)
>
>
>
>




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