On Nov 5, 2021, at 17:53, Brian Park via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:

1) Many country names are too long to fit into 14 characters. Let's say we relax that constraint because we deprecate support for any old Unix system that cannot support these longer file names. But there are countries like "Heard Island and McDonald Islands", "South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands", and "United States Minor Outlying Islands", and "British Indian Ocean Territory". Just from an ergonomics perspective, we should find a way to shorten these very long names.

Given that some of these names are themselves the result of long and sometimes contentious debate within their own constituencies, I suspect that *any* shortening of these names is going to ignite controversies. Even the mere ‘Englishification’ of them will be controversial. (Witness the ongoing Kyiv/Kiev controversy).

Cheers!


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