And yes, capitals can change, good point. I was thinking about the case of a new zone that needs a name. For that, I would >>start with the capital if it's in the zone, otherwise the biggest or best known town. Then, once the name has been assigned, leave >>it alone.
Kolkatta/Calcutta used to be a major city in the past, but other cities in India have overtaken it in significance. This trend has been observed for three decades now. If I may be at liberty to use Google Fight to compare the trends on Google, then by comparing Bombay/Calcutta & Mumbai/Kolkata, it throws up a highly skewed ratio in favour of Bombay/Mumbai. I'm not sure if there is a precedent before for changing names of a time zone in such a fashion, but I make my request so that the timezone name chosen is not archaic ie reflecting historical trends -- but rather reflecting current and future realities that have been fairly stable over several decades. I think changing the timezone name to Asia/New Delhi would be more representative of the country since India follows a single timezone. Regards, Nicholas On 5 January 2011 08:06, Marshall Eubanks <tme@americafree.tv> wrote:
On Jan 4, 2011, at 5:00 PM, Philip Newton wrote:
On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 22:57, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
But capitals change too (for example, Kazakhstan). No naming principle will work everywhere, and it's probably better to stick with the principles that we have. The question here is when one principle (use the most-populous city) should override another one (avoid name changes). It's not a slam-dunk case either way, which is why I asked for further comments.
FWIW, I'd favour the "avoid name changes" principle.
There are a number of zones which have "the wrong" name (typically this means "not the current capital"). As long as the city stays in the zone, I'd tend to keep it.
Not to mention the countries with more than one capital.
Regards Marshall
Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton <philip.newton@gmail.com>