On Fri, Dec 15, 2017, at 14:27, Paul.Koning@dell.com wrote:
"Peking" is the Wade-Giles encoding of the Chinese phonetics;
The online Wade-Giles translator I found gives "Peiching", in fact. AIUI, Peking actually came indirectly via Portuguese and/oror French (which to my understanding have different values for "p" more closely resembling the Chinese sound in question), rather than being the result of a systematic transliteration. (Incidentally, the systematic transliteration of the Russian name for Kyiv is "Kiyev")
Since most people don't know the aberrations of Wade-Giles, they may be mislead into thinking that the name of that city has changed. This is not so, but I suppose the misunderstanding is excusable.
The name *in English*, which was neither before nor now pronounced in a way closely resembling the Chinese, has changed. As to the question of Kyiv itself... In googling for information on this, I did find the following claim at https://www.calvertjournal.com/features/show/4927: "The request by the Ukrainian government for Kyiv to become the standard English spelling has been successful to an extent, with the US Board on Geographic Names approving the spelling and the White House and UK Foreign Office, among others, using it." I think (if this is indeed the case), this is a strong argument for making the change. Incidentally, this is not without precedent. The following links all appear to be the result of similar "transliteration" changes. Link Asia/Ashgabat Asia/Ashkhabad Link Asia/Kolkata Asia/Calcutta Link Asia/Dhaka Asia/Dacca Link Asia/Kathmandu Asia/Katmandu Link Asia/Macau Asia/Macao Link Asia/Yangon Asia/Rangoon Link Asia/Thimphu Asia/Thimbu Link Asia/Ulaanbaatar Asia/Ulan_Bator Link Pacific/Pohnpei Pacific/Ponape Link Pacific/Chuuk Pacific/Truk