[tz] Wrong spelling of a city in a timezone name

[Steven R. Loomis]

Hello,

• Note that CLDR is already tracking this issue at
https://unicode.org/cldr/trac/ticket/10185#comment:7 — the English
usage was not (at present) compelling enough to make a change to the
English side.

• Per the CLDR comparison charts,
https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/by_type/timezones.europe.html#6dd1046c581ae238
you can note the spellings:

> "Київ" for Ukranian, "Киев" for Russian.

• As noted above, "Europe/Kiev" is just an identifier and not the
correct thing to put in front of users.

• If you would like to explore CLDR translations for time zones, visit
https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/by_type/ and click on the
various time zone links in the following line:

Timezones: Timezone Display Patterns | North America | South America |
Africa | Europe | Russia | Western Asia | Central Asia | Eastern Asia
| Southern Asia | Southeast Asia | Australasia | Antarctica | Oceania
| Unknown Region | Overrides

Regards,
Steven

On Tue, Oct 9, 2018 at 11:38 AM Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
>
> Igor via tz wrote:
>
> > Ukrainian government is currently running a campaign called Kyiv Not Kiev
>
> If common English-language usage changes so that "Kyiv" is way more popular than
> "Kiev", we plan to change too. That hasn't happened yet.
>
> > I saw in your files that you understand that Kyiv is correct spelling and you
> > reason that Kiev is more common, alas that argument is wrong. It's only more
> > common because it's been mistakingly used for a long period of time.
>
> As a rule we don't judge who's right or who's wrong about spelling; we just take
> the most common English spelling. Anyway, the name "Europe/Kiev" is intended to
> be an internal identifier, not something visible to end users.
>
> We've recently added text to try to explain this better, as follows:
>
>
> Each timezone has a unique name. Inexperienced users are not expected to select
> these names unaided. Distributors should provide documentation and/or a simple
> selection interface that explains each name via a map or via descriptive text
> like "Ruthenia" instead of the timezone name "<code>Europe/Uzhgorod</code>". If
> geolocation information is available, a selection interface can locate the user
> on a timezone map or prioritize names that are geographically close. For an
> example selection interface, see the <code>tzselect</code> program in the
> <code><abbr>tz</abbr></code> code. The <a
> href="http://cldr.unicode.org/">Unicode Common Locale Data Repository</a>
> contains data that may be useful for other selection interfaces; it maps
> timezone names like <code>Europe/Uzhgorod</code> to CLDR names like
> <code>uauzh</code> which are in turn mapped to locale-dependent strings like
> "Uzhhorod", "Ungvár", "Ужгород", and "乌日哥罗德".
>
> ...
>
> # From Paul Eggert (2018-10-03):
> # As is usual in tzdb, Ukrainian zones use the most common English spellings.
> # For example, tzdb uses Europe/Kiev, as "Kiev" is the most common spelling in
> # English for Ukraine's capital, even though it is certainly wrong as a
> # transliteration of the Ukrainian "Київ".  This is similar to tzdb's use of
> # Europe/Prague, which is certainly wrong as a transliteration of the Czech
> # "Praha".  ("Kiev" came from old Slavic via Russian to English, and "Prague"
> # came from old Slavic via French to English, so the two cases have something
> # in common.)  Admittedly English-language spelling of Ukrainian names is
> # controversial, and some day "Kyiv" may become substantially more popular in
> # English; in the meantime, stick with the traditional English "Kiev" as that
> # means less disruption for our users.
> #
> # Anyway, none of the common English-language spellings (Kiev, Kyiv, Kieff,
> # Kijeff, Kijev, Kiyef, Kiyeff) do justice to the common pronunciation in
> # Ukrainian, namely [ˈkɪjiu̯] (IPA).  This pronunciation has nothing like an
> # English "v" or "f", and instead trails off with what an English-speaker
> # would call a demure "oo" sound, and it would would be better anglicized as
> # "Kuiyu".  Here's a sound file, if you would like to do as the Kuiyuvians do:
> # https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Uk-Київ.ogg