[tz] Pacific islands as identifiers

[Paul-Cathy Unger]

Hi,

I was recently setting the time zone on my computer to my current location -- Honiara, Solomon Islands. In my operating system's drop-down list of "Cities" (I use a Linux distro based on Ubuntu), I could not find Honiara. I finally ended up clicking on the map approximately where I thought it would be. To my surprise, where I clicked had the label "Guadalcanal". I wasn't expecting that, and certainly wasn't looking for Guadalcanal in the list -- Honiara would have made a lot more sense to me (e.g., https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/solomon-islands).

I'm wondering what the rationale is for using island / province names for some Pacific nations and city names for others (e.g., Apia, Samoa; Port Moresby, PNG)? And I wonder if knowing that there are historic animosities in a country between people from one island and another would be enough to consider changing an apparent favouring of one island over another? For a brief and somewhat current analysis, see https://www.csis.org/analysis/deep-roots-solomon-islands-ongoing-political-crisis.

I offer this for your kind consideration,

Paul Unger
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