On 2015-04-13 15:45, Hank W. wrote:
I actually prefer the style used in North America, Europe and Africa of multiple countries using the same name for the same UTC offset rather than the style of South America and Asia of the same time offset having a different name in each country. It's neater and easier to handle, and it's easier to remember what the names stand for. For example, it's easier to remember that Central European Time is between Western European Time and Eastern European Time than it is to remember that Myanmar Time is UTC+6:30.
Out of curiosity, I recently decided to figure out which of the world's 41 different UTC offsets currently has the most names. The winner (or loser?) is UTC-3, which currently has 13 different names (Amazon Summer Time, Argentina Time, Atlantic Daylight Saving Time, Brasilia Time, Chile Summer Time, Falkland Islands Summer Time, French Guiana Time, Paraguay Summer Time, Pierre-et-Miquelon Standard Time, Rothera Time, Suriname Time, Uruguay Time and Western Greenland Time). I'm not suggesting that something be done to change this fact; I'm just sharing an interesting bit of trivia.
One thing I had intended to include in my previous message but forgot to is that I don't see anything wrong with ambiguous tz abbreviations that do not represent more than one UTC offset. PST is cool because Pacific Standard Time and Pitcairn Standard Time are both UTC-8, and AQTT is cool because Aqtobe Time and Aqtau Time are both UTC+5.
Apart from North America and EU time zones, which have common standard dates and times for DST start and end regardless of UTC offset, most other time zones have unique start and end date and time rules, or may not switch to DST in the tropics, e.g. UTC-3 rules include Arg, ArgAQ, Brazil, Canada, EU, Falk, Uruguay, so a common UTC offset or abbreviation says little about current and less about historical observances. -- Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis