Africa/Cairo, abbreviations

[Paul Eggert]

> Date: Wed, 09 Oct 2002 16:07:35 -0700
> From: Cathy Baird <Cathy.Baird at oracle.com>
> 
> I want to explain some of the time zone names and abbreviations that are
> in Oracle's time zone files. Those files contain anecdotal information
> of various kinds, which is where I got your names and email addresses.
> The output sample I want to use starts like this:
> 
> TZNAME               TZABBREV
> -------------------- ----------
> Africa/Cairo         LMT
> Africa/Cairo         EET
> Africa/Cairo         EEST
> Africa/Tripoli       LMT
> Africa/Tripoli       CET
> Africa/Tripoli       CEST
> Africa/Tripoli       EET
> 
> I see these abbreviations in the file, but I don't see explanations of
> any of them except LMT. What do EET, EEST, CET, and CEST stand for? (I'm
> guessing the S is for standard, the first E for east, the C for central.
> But what is the inner E for?)


In that context "ET" stands for "European Time", and "EST" stands for
"European Summer Time".  This is explained in the "europe" file.

It does seem a bit odd that time in northern Africa is called
"European time", but that's what the first contributors submitted many
years ago, and we haven't had anyone tell us otherwise since then.