Timezone names for Greenland

Ole Holm Nielsen ohnielse at fysik.dtu.dk
Tue Feb 27 14:36:12 UTC 1996


Dear Sir,

In your timezone data file for Europe you define:

#       -3:00   WGT+DST Western Greenland*
#       -2:00   MGT+DST Middle Greenland*
#       -1:00   EGT+DST Eastern Greenland*

Zone America/Scoresbysund -1:29:00 -    LMT     1916 Jul 28
                        -2:00   -       MGT     1980 Apr  6 2:00
                        -2:00   M-Eur   MGT%s   1981 Mar 29
                        -1:00   M-Eur   EGT%s
Zone America/Godthab    -3:26:56 -      LMT     1916 Jul 28
                        -3:00   -       WGT     1980 Apr  6 2:00
                        -3:00   M-Eur   WGT%s
Zone America/Thule      -4:35:08 -      LMT     1916 Jul 28
                        -4:00   -       AST

The naming "America" is politically incorrect.  Greenland is a part of
Denmark, but has had home rule for 10 or 11 years.  If anything, you
would have to define the zone names as "Denmark/...." or perhaps
"Greenland/....".  Furthermore, the town names that you give are Danish
names.  Greenlanders would undoubtedly insist that the Greenland names
be used, so perhaps better namings would be:

America/Scoresbysund -> Greenland/Ittoqqortoormiit
America/Godthab      -> Greenland/Nuuk
America/Thule        -> Greenland/Dundas

I don't know if the timezone names have been fixed by international
convention, but the naming would appear controversial :-)

With best regards,
Dr. Ole H. Nielsen
Technical University of Denmark
 
% Ole Holm Nielsen
% UNI-C, Building 304
% Technical University of Denmark, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark
% E-mail: Ole.H.Nielsen at uni-c.dk or Ole.H.Nielsen at fysik.dtu.dk
% WWW URL: http://www.fysik.dtu.dk/persons/ohnielse.html 
% Telephone: (+45) 35 87 89 65



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