Igor via tz wrote:
Ukrainian government is currently running a campaign called Kyiv Not Kiev
If common English-language usage changes so that "Kyiv" is way more popular than "Kiev", we plan to change too. That hasn't happened yet.
I saw in your files that you understand that Kyiv is correct spelling and you reason that Kiev is more common, alas that argument is wrong. It's only more common because it's been mistakingly used for a long period of time.
As a rule we don't judge who's right or who's wrong about spelling; we just take the most common English spelling. Anyway, the name "Europe/Kiev" is intended to be an internal identifier, not something visible to end users. We've recently added text to try to explain this better, as follows: Each timezone has a unique name. Inexperienced users are not expected to select these names unaided. Distributors should provide documentation and/or a simple selection interface that explains each name via a map or via descriptive text like "Ruthenia" instead of the timezone name "<code>Europe/Uzhgorod</code>". If geolocation information is available, a selection interface can locate the user on a timezone map or prioritize names that are geographically close. For an example selection interface, see the <code>tzselect</code> program in the <code><abbr>tz</abbr></code> code. The <a href="http://cldr.unicode.org/">Unicode Common Locale Data Repository</a> contains data that may be useful for other selection interfaces; it maps timezone names like <code>Europe/Uzhgorod</code> to CLDR names like <code>uauzh</code> which are in turn mapped to locale-dependent strings like "Uzhhorod", "Ungvár", "Ужгород", and "乌日哥罗德". ... # From Paul Eggert (2018-10-03): # As is usual in tzdb, Ukrainian zones use the most common English spellings. # For example, tzdb uses Europe/Kiev, as "Kiev" is the most common spelling in # English for Ukraine's capital, even though it is certainly wrong as a # transliteration of the Ukrainian "Київ". This is similar to tzdb's use of # Europe/Prague, which is certainly wrong as a transliteration of the Czech # "Praha". ("Kiev" came from old Slavic via Russian to English, and "Prague" # came from old Slavic via French to English, so the two cases have something # in common.) Admittedly English-language spelling of Ukrainian names is # controversial, and some day "Kyiv" may become substantially more popular in # English; in the meantime, stick with the traditional English "Kiev" as that # means less disruption for our users. # # Anyway, none of the common English-language spellings (Kiev, Kyiv, Kieff, # Kijeff, Kijev, Kiyef, Kiyeff) do justice to the common pronunciation in # Ukrainian, namely [ˈkɪjiu̯] (IPA). This pronunciation has nothing like an # English "v" or "f", and instead trails off with what an English-speaker # would call a demure "oo" sound, and it would would be better anglicized as # "Kuiyu". Here's a sound file, if you would like to do as the Kuiyuvians do: # https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Uk-Київ.ogg