On Thursday, June 2 2016, "Paul Eggert" wrote to "Victor Sudakov, Time zone mailing list" saying:
On 06/02/2016 01:11 AM, Victor Sudakov wrote:
Sources like the ones below are not good enough?
No, not at all. The Wikipedia page is derived from tzdata, and is not a reliable source is its own right. The other sources are not English-language.
For non-English-speaking places that nonetheless have a standard name for their time zone, I think an English calque of the commonly-used name or abbreviation in the local language is a better choice than giving up entirely. (Much as we use "CET" for "Mitteleuropäische Zeit / MEZ".) It certainly sounds like the common usage in Russia (and in the Soviet Union back in the day) is to call the timezones МСК−1 through МСК+9, which would be calqued as MSK-1 through MSK+9. This is what I'd recommend for Russian timezones, unless actual Russians disagree. -- Jonathan Lennox lennox@cs.columbia.edu