Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2022 11:21:37 +0100 From: David via tz <tz@iana.org> Message-ID: <39316283-6bc5-cd01-f7d0-a1c61f44bad5@pov.es> | Ecuador has currently two time zones, one for the mainland, and | another for the Galapagos Islands. Yes. | The city that is listed for the mainland is Guayaquil, with no mention | of the capital Quito. Being the capital is irrelevant. We also do not have Washington, Ottawa, Beijing, or New Delhi as zone names for zones in the USA, Canada, China, or India, but rather New York (which isn't even the capital of its state), Toronto, Shanghai, and Kolkata instead. | Guayaquil is the second most populous city in Ecuador, The population data I have seen suggests it is the most populous, at about 2 million people, with Quito second, at about 1.4 million. Certainly deciding what exactly is to be counted as being the city for these purposes isn't always simple, and relative populations do alter over time, but once a city is chosen as the name for a zone, being consistent means that we rarely change. (Eg: it may be that the population of Beijing is now greater than, or at least, similar to, that of Shanghai - but it wasn't when the name was chosen). | but why it is the only city listed is odd. There is only one (as we understand, and you confirmed above) mainland timezone. The timezone and its data is what is important, not its name. One zone needs only one name. This project has (long ago) decided to pick the name of the most populous city/town to use the timezone in question as the name of the zone, and by that rule, and the population data available, Guayaquil is it. | It is akin to choosing Marseilles as the only city for France instead of | Paris. Paris is more populous than Marseilles. As is London than Birmingham. Capitals are often (but not always) the biggest city, so it happens that the names of capitals are chosen as timezone names quite frequently, but it has nothing at all do do with them being the capital. | Is there any chance of having Quito added? Not a lot I suspect. But if you have some particular desire to have that happen locally (if you ever really normally ever see the zone name) you can simply make a link (or copy) of the zone data file (the TZif file). kre