>>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>
>
>