[tz] Kyiv

[Tim Parenti]

I searched "(kiev OR kyiv) site:____" with various English-language news
sites on Google News, and sorted each result by date to get a recent
article which referred specifically to the Ukrainian capital:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/15/opinion/mikheil-saakashvi
li-ukraine-russia.html
2017-12-15: "After students were beaten in Kiev’s central square…"

http://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/news/tn-wknd-et-kuz
in-20171124-story.html
2017-11-24: "…knew it was time to leave his home of Kiev, Ukraine."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/corr
uption-makes-ukraine-even-more-vulnerable-to-russia/2017/12/
14/5c0e3122-df6a-11e7-bbd0-9dfb2e37492a_story.html
2017-12-14: "Kiev has been the scene of a somewhat farcical drama this
month…"

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/24/politics/paul-manafort-russia/index.html
2017-11-25: "…obtained from a government source in the Ukrainian capital,
Kiev."

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/ukraine-s-lgbtq-sold
iers-hope-their-service-will-change-hearts-n822291
2017-11-28: "…March for Equality, an LGBTQ event in Kiev…"

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/12/15/reporters-notebook-p
utins-talk-thon-experience-like-no-other.html
2017-12-15: "…don’t want what has happened in Kiev to happen in their
cities."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2017/12/15/gerard-pique-
sometimes-criticised-say-not-worried/
2017-12-15: "…the final of the Champions League in Kiev in May…"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/08/ukrainian-poli
ce-recapture-former-georgian-president-saakashvili
2017-12-08: "…the opposition leader had been detained by police in Kiev…"

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42289481
2017-12-09: "…was dragged from his home in Kiev and arrested."

https://news.sky.com/story/ex-georgia-president-mikheil-saak
ashvili-broken-free-from-police-custody-11157379
2017-12-05: "…an apartment in the capital Kiev…"

http://www.smh.com.au/world/paul-manafort-and-russian-collea
gue-ghostwrote-editorial-special-counsel-20171204-gzyrbx.html
2017-12-05: "…ran Manafort's office in Kiev…"

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-06/ukraine-protesters-fre
es-former-georgian-president-after-arrest/9230676
2017-12-05: "The turmoil in Kiev is just the latest challenge for the
Ukrainian Government…"

Indeed, it seems these major English-language news outlets almost
universally use "Kiev" to this day, except when the place name is used as
part of a different proper noun, such as when referring to the *Kyiv Post*
<https://www.kyivpost.com/>.  It's even in the BBC News style guide to use
"Kiev" and not "Kyiv":
http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/article/art20130702112133537

Although several of these outlets have written articles on the differences
in orthography over the years, until there is enough common usage of "Kyiv"
in the English language that a significant number of these outlets decide
to switch, it is reasonable to say that "Kiev" remains the
generally-accepted English spelling despite certain governmental
recognitions of "Kyiv".  But this is not the venue for that discussion.

--
Tim Parenti

On 15 December 2017 at 14:19, Garrett Wollman <wollman at csail.mit.edu> wrote:

> <<On Fri, 15 Dec 2017 11:32:03 +0100, "Philip Paeps" <philip at trouble.is>
> said:
>
> > Note that we do not have a "Europe/Koebenhavn" or a "Europe/Lefkosia" -
> > to pick two examples of transliterations of local names that are
> > different from the names of the cities in English.  We have a
> > "Europe/Copenhagen" and the "Europe/Nicosia".
>
> Contrast the case (which thankfully we do not have to deal with) of
> the capital city of the People's Republic of China.  In English, it
> used to be called "Peking", and in fact in the name of the university
> and of the duck dish it still is.  The PRC government made a concerted
> campaign to change the name used by English speakers to be "Beijing",
> which is a phonetic representation of the name of the city in Mandarin
> (putonghua).  This has to a very large extent worked, and now most
> English texts say "Beijing" and not "Peking" (although many people
> still don't pronounce it "correctly" because the letters in hanyu
> pinyin don't have the same sound values as they do in English).
> However, in many languages *other than English*, the name of the city
> has not changed -- AFAIK it's still "Pékin" in French, for example.
>
> So the lesson here is that, if the Ukrainian people (or their
> government) earnestly want to change how the name of their capital
> city is written by English speakers, they're going to have to do a way
> more effective job at lobbying the people who actually shape how
> English speakers use words -- especially the mass media.  The tz
> database is descriptive and lobbying its maintainers will not have the
> desired effect.
>
> -GAWollman
>
>
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