[tz] KyivNotKiev

Clive D.W. Feather clive at davros.org
Fri Nov 27 09:19:05 UTC 2020


Andriy Ivanchenko said:
> Thank you for considering my question.
> I think in English the name of the city came from the Russian language due
> to historical features.
> Kiev - from Russian pronunciation.
> Kyiv - from Ukrainian pronunciation.
> The state language of Ukraine is the Ukrainian language.
> Most programmers show the original record from the database as Kiev when
> providing the time zone selection. And this leads to discussions.
> https://ua.usembassy.gov
> You can also find the correct inscription on the website of the US Embassy
> in Ukraine. In the contacts below.
> U.S. Embassy
> U.S. Embassy Kyiv <https://ua.usembassy.gov/embassy/kyiv/>
> 4 A.I. Sikorsky St.
> 04112 Kyiv, Ukraine

Thank you. We are all too aware of this issue and at least some of the
history behind it.

> Here https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/55-2010-??#Text you can see
> transliteration at the state level, if that helps.
> Maybe it's time to introduce multilingual support in your database?

The time zone database is not the place for multilingual support or
characters other than ASCII. There are other projects which do this, such
as CLDR
(http://cldr.unicode.org/translation/timezones).

The names used in the time zone database are identifiers and long-term
stability of these names is an important matter. It is not an absolute -
such name changes have been made before - but it has significant technical
implications and so such changes aren't done lightly. The names were
originally chosen as a convenient way for the database maintainer to refer
to various areas of the world that would change and were not intended for
use in a public interface.

Read the History file for much more on this.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather          | If you lie to the compiler,
Email: clive at davros.org     | it will get its revenge.
Web: http://www.davros.org  |   - Henry Spencer
Mobile: +44 7973 377646



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