Doug Ewell via tz <tz@iana.org> writes:
Identifiers are sometimes changed like this to reflect official city name changes, or to reflect updated spellings in “common English practice,” which really belies the claim that they are not meant for human consumption. If they are indeed not, as Guy says, then there should be exceedingly few reasons to ever change an existing tzid.
Indeed. There have been exceptions in the past, such as s/Kiev/Kyiv/, but that seemed more than a little politically driven. I wonder if there shouldn't be a policy that a zone name once chosen does not change, period. theory.html already enunciates some principles of interface stability, and I'm missing why this is not one of them. I do see Do not change established names if they only marginally violate the above guidelines. For example, do not change the existing name <code>Europe/Rome</code> to <code>Europe/Milan</code> merely because Milan's population has grown to be somewhat greater than Rome's. but that seems too weakly worded. Even as it stands, though, it's sufficient reason to reject the present request. regards, tom lane