zone.tab corrections

[Andy McDonald]

Oscar van Vlijmen wrote:
>> From: Andy McDonald
>> Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 14:16:59 -0400
>> Subject: Re: zone.tab corrections
> 
>> In the case that Russian is one of the official languages, I would agree
>> that no change is required. However this is distinct from the status of
>> Russian as being widely understood; certainly many people in the former
>> USSR understand Russian, but I would imagine that the average Ukrainian,
>> Moldovan, Tajik or Georgian would take issue with a transliteration from
>> Russian.
> 
> Note that I am a bit lazy (I did most of the Russian names for TZ). Lists
> with time zones in Russia and the former Soviet Republics can be found in
> Russian. Finding the local names means a lot more work.
> The GeoNames server is a great help though. But the transliteration of names
> is not always correct.
> Best would be: find the name in the original spelling with Cyrillic, Arabic,
> whatever characters, find the official or a reliable transliteration scheme
> and produce a posix 1 conformant transliteration.
> There you see: too much work for me!
> 

The time zones of the former USSR, plus Mongolia (heavily influenced by
its neighbour) are:

AM	+4011+04430	Asia/Yerevan
AZ	+4023+04951	Asia/Baku
BY	+5354+02734	Europe/Minsk
EE	+5925+02445	Europe/Tallinn
GE	+4143+04449	Asia/Tbilisi

KZ	+4315+07657	Asia/Almaty	most locations
KZ	+4448+06528	Asia/Qyzylorda	Qyzylorda (Kyzylorda, Kzyl-Orda)
KZ	+5017+05710	Asia/Aqtobe	Aqtobe (Aktobe)
KZ	+4431+05016	Asia/Aqtau	Atyrau (Atirau, Gur'yev), Mangghystau (Mankistau)
KZ	+5113+05121	Asia/Oral	West Kazakhstan

KG	+4254+07436	Asia/Bishkek
LV	+5657+02406	Europe/Riga
LT	+5441+02519	Europe/Vilnius
MD	+4700+02850	Europe/Chisinau

MN	+4755+10653	Asia/Ulaanbaatar	most locations
MN	+4801+09139	Asia/Hovd	Bayan-Olgiy, Govi-Altai, Hovd, Uvs, Zavkhan
MN	+4804+11430	Asia/Choibalsan	Dornod, Sukhbaatar

RU	+5443+02030	Europe/Kaliningrad	Moscow-01 - Kaliningrad
RU	+5545+03735	Europe/Moscow	Moscow+00 - west Russia
RU	+4844+04425	Europe/Volgograd	Moscow+00 - Caspian Sea
RU	+5312+05009	Europe/Samara	Moscow+01 - Samara, Udmurtia
RU	+5651+06036	Asia/Yekaterinburg	Moscow+02 - Urals
RU	+5500+07324	Asia/Omsk	Moscow+03 - west Siberia
RU	+5502+08255	Asia/Novosibirsk	Moscow+03 - Novosibirsk
RU	+5601+09250	Asia/Krasnoyarsk	Moscow+04 - Yenisei River
RU	+5216+10420	Asia/Irkutsk	Moscow+05 - Lake Baikal
RU	+6200+12940	Asia/Yakutsk	Moscow+06 - Lena River
RU	+4310+13156	Asia/Vladivostok	Moscow+07 - Amur River
RU	+4658+14242	Asia/Sakhalin	Moscow+07 - Sakhalin Island
RU	+5934+15048	Asia/Magadan	Moscow+08 - Magadan
RU	+5301+15839	Asia/Kamchatka	Moscow+09 - Kamchatka
RU	+6445+17729	Asia/Anadyr	Moscow+10 - Bering Sea

TJ	+3835+06848	Asia/Dushanbe
TM	+3757+05823	Asia/Ashgabat

UA	+5026+03031	Europe/Kiev	most locations
UA	+4837+02218	Europe/Uzhgorod	Ruthenia
UA	+4750+03510	Europe/Zaporozhye	Zaporozh'ye, E Lugansk
UA	+4457+03406	Europe/Simferopol	central Crimea

UZ	+3940+06648	Asia/Samarkand	west Uzbekistan
UZ	+4120+06918	Asia/Tashkent	east Uzbekistan

Most of these time zones are named from the accepted English spelling,
or - for Russia - accepted transliteration from Russian, so there are
few transliteration issues.

In addition to the issue of Ukrainian names, the only difficulty arises
- to the best of my knowledge - with Hovd (often transliterated from
Ховд as Khovd (but as Paul Eggert says in the 'asia' file, 'Naming and
spelling is tricky in Mongolia'). I was not confident in the Kazakh
names, but the CIA seems to agree:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kz.html .

In short, I think that the time zones of the former USSR are
appropriately named, with the exception (I claim!) of those in Ukraine.