Unfortunate time zone names in the United States
Here's the soon to be screwed up definition of US time zones. 15 USC 261 says For the purpose of establishing the standard time of the United States, the territory of the United States shall be divided into nine zones in the manner provided in this section. Except as provided in section 260a(a) of this title, the standard time of the first zone shall be Coordinated Universal Time retarded by 4 hours; that of the second zone retarded by 5 hours; that of the third zone retarded by 6 hours; that of the fourth zone retarded by 7 hours; that of the fifth zone retarded 8 hours; that of the sixth zone retarded by 9 hours; that of the seventh zone retarded by 10 hours; that of the eighth zone retarded by 11 hours; and that of the ninth zone shall be Coordinated Universal Time advanced by 10 hours. 15 USC 263 says: The standard time of the first zone shall be known and designated as Atlantic standard time; that of the second zone shall be known and designated as eastern standard time; that of the third zone shall be known and designated as central standard time; that of the fourth zone shall be known and designated as mountain standard time; that of the fifth zone shall be known and designated as Pacific standard time; that of the sixth zone shall be known and designated as Alaska standard time; that of the seventh zone shall be known and designated as Hawaii-Aleutian standard time; that of the eighth zone shall be known and designated as Samoa standard time; and that of the ninth zone shall be known as Chamorro standard time. Section 260a currently has the daylight saving rule, advance in March, fall back in November. The bill passed by the Senate deletes 260a, and updates 261 to change each of the numbers by an hour, 4 changes to 3, 5 to 4, and so forth 11 changes to 10 and the final 10 changes to 11. But it does *not* change section 263. This means that the official US names of the time zones change, which is really stupid. Since Hawaii, Samoa, and Guam do not use daylight time, Hawaii will now be in Alaska standard time, Samoa in Hawaii-Aleutian standard time, and Guam in a time zone with no name. I hope the House will fix this if they take up the bill, but I wouldn't make any changes to my time zone files yet. With respect to Canada, history shows that their timezones follow the US so if the US make a change like this, a bill in Ottawa will change Canada to match. There are currently places where you change time when you cross the border, like between Maine and New Brunswick, but it would be too painful for Montreal and Toronto and Windsor not to match New York and Detroit, and Vancouver not to match Seattle. R's, John
On Mar 17, 2022, at 15:13, John Levine via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
The bill passed by the Senate deletes 260a, and updates 261 to change each of the numbers by an hour, 4 changes to 3, 5 to 4, and so forth 11 changes to 10 and the final 10 changes to 11.
But it does *not* change section 263. This means that the official US names of the time zones change, which is really stupid. Since Hawaii, Samoa, and Guam do not use daylight time, Hawaii will now be in Alaska standard time, Samoa in Hawaii-Aleutian standard time, and Guam in a time zone with no name.
Hmm. That’s not how I'm reading this. *If* I’m understanding it properly (heh, heh), the names themselves are not changing; rather, it’s the *meaning* of the names that are changing, viz-a-viz: Atlantic standard time: UTC-4 => UTC-3 eastern standard time: UTC-5 => UTC-4 central standard time: UTC-6 => UTC-5 mountain standard time: UTC-7 => UTC-6 Pacific standard time: UTC-8 => UTC-7 Alaska standard time: UTC-9 => UTC-8 Hawaii-Aleutian standard time: UTC-10 => UTC-9 Samoa standard time: UTC-11 => UTC-10 Chamorro standard time: UTC+10 => UTC+9 So, despite all of the talk in the mainstream press about “permanent Daylight Saving Time”, this is actually a redefinition of *standard* time to one hour earlier than before, along with the *abolishment* of Daylight Saving Time. Cheers! |---------------------------------------------------------------------| | Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Chief Developer | | | Paravel Systems | |---------------------------------------------------------------------| | A room without books is like a body without a soul. | | | | -- Cicero | |---------------------------------------------------------------------|
On 17 Mar 2022, at 16.07, Fred Gleason via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
So, despite all of the talk in the mainstream press about “permanent Daylight Saving Time”, this is actually a redefinition of *standard* time to one hour earlier than before, along with the *abolishment* of Daylight Saving Time.
Yes, that does seem to be the actual implementation. I wouldn't blame the press too much, though, since the section title "making daylight saving time permanent" is in the bill.
On Mar 17, 2022, at 16:20, Max Harmony <maxh@maxh.name> wrote:
Yes, that does seem to be the actual implementation. I wouldn't blame the press too much, though, since the section title "making daylight saving time permanent" is in the bill.
Agreed. But, this little semantic difference means tracking down every reference to those “standard time” zone names in existing standards (RFC 822, etc) and modifying the definitions accordingly. And, despite the fact that those symbolic zone names have been deprecated for ages in favor of numeric offsets, there’s still a *ton* of software out there that use them. So all of that would need to be fixed too. Oof! It would be much simpler if the ‘advance in March, fall back in November’ language in section 260a were changed to something like ‘starting in November 2023, Daylight Saving Time shall be observed in perpetuity’, and then change *nothing else* in the existing law. That way, it all reduces to a simple change of the start/end dates for DST. No fundamental definitions would need to change. Cheers! |---------------------------------------------------------------------| | Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Chief Developer | | | Paravel Systems | |---------------------------------------------------------------------| | A room without books is like a body without a soul. | | | | -- Cicero | |---------------------------------------------------------------------|
John Levine via tz said:
The bill passed by the Senate deletes 260a, and updates 261 to change each of the numbers by an hour, 4 changes to 3, 5 to 4, and so forth 11 changes to 10 and the final 10 changes to 11.
But it does *not* change section 263. This means that the official US names of the time zones change, which is really stupid. Since Hawaii, Samoa, and Guam do not use daylight time, Hawaii will now be in Alaska standard time, Samoa in Hawaii-Aleutian standard time, and Guam in a time zone with no name.
Not necessarily. Hawaii-Aleutian standard time will become UTC-9. I don't know what legislation says what time is used in Hawaii, but if it uses that name then time in Hawaii will jump forward one hour on the date the law comes into effect. -- Clive D.W. Feather | If you lie to the compiler, Email: clive@davros.org | it will get its revenge. Web: http://www.davros.org | - Henry Spencer Mobile: +44 7973 377646
On Thu, Mar 17, 2022 at 4:51 PM Clive D.W. Feather via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
John Levine via tz said:
The bill passed by the Senate deletes 260a, and updates 261 to change each of the numbers by an hour, 4 changes to 3, 5 to 4, and so forth 11 changes to 10 and the final 10 changes to 11.
But it does *not* change section 263. This means that the official US names of the time zones change, which is really stupid. Since Hawaii, Samoa, and Guam do not use daylight time, Hawaii will now be in Alaska standard time, Samoa in Hawaii-Aleutian standard time, and Guam in a time zone with no name.
Not necessarily. Hawaii-Aleutian standard time will become UTC-9. I don't know what legislation says what time is used in Hawaii, but if it uses that name then time in Hawaii will jump forward one hour on the date the law comes into effect.
Section 2.b.2 of the act seems to imply that Hawaii can continue to operate on UTC-10 if it wishes. The zone would be called Samoa which is clearly an oversight. The reality is that most of the world's time zone legislation is either ambiguous or full of conflicting statements. This is why I believe it is up to the members of this list to: 1. Figure out the intent of legislation as it pertains to the actual setting of clocks. 2. Seek clarification from the politicians if it is not clear on how the clocks are to be set. 3. Ignore everything else uttered by the politicians. 4. Come up with appropriate naming standards even though those standards may conflict with government legislation. As I stated yesterday, the naming standards should apply across national, state, provincial and territorial borders. I believe that the US government did the correct thing by advertising this change as permanent Daylight Saving Time, and then attempting to redefine Standard Time. If you want the public to understand the intent of this change, you cannot use the term "Standard Time" without confusing 90% of the population. If you simply tell the public that Daylight Saving will be permanent, there is absolutely no ambiguity about what you are trying to accomplish. FYI. Yukon recently did the same thing. The Yukon government asked the public if they wanted "year-round Daylight Saving Time (UTC-7)" or "year-round Standard Time (UTC-8)". The public chose the first option, but when the legislation was drawn up, all references to the term "Daylight Saving" were removed. -chris
On Mar 17, 2022, at 17:31, Chris Walton via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
I believe that the US government did the correct thing by advertising this change as permanent Daylight Saving Time, and then attempting to redefine Standard Time. If you want the public to understand the intent of this change, you cannot use the term "Standard Time" without confusing 90% of the population. If you simply tell the public that Daylight Saving will be permanent, there is absolutely no ambiguity about what you are trying to accomplish. FYI. Yukon recently did the same thing. The Yukon government asked the public if they wanted "year-round Daylight Saving Time (UTC-7)" or "year-round Standard Time (UTC-8)". The public chose the first option, but when the legislation was drawn up, all references to the term "Daylight Saving" were removed.
All good points! Is there an emerging consensus here yet about which way we want to try to steer this? (I’m thinking something along the lines of “model language” for an amendment that we could take to our respective Congress-critters). (1) Just call the new normal ‘Daylight Saving Time’ and then stick a fork in it (2) Redefine ’Standard Time’ zones with new offsets (3) Something else? Cheers! |---------------------------------------------------------------------| | Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Chief Developer | | | Paravel Systems | |---------------------------------------------------------------------| | A room without books is like a body without a soul. | | | | -- Cicero | |---------------------------------------------------------------------|
On 3/17/22 14:31, Chris Walton via tz wrote:
Yukon recently did the same thing.
When Yukon did that, we modeled that as America/Whitehorse and America/Dawson being on -07 standard time all year, with the abbreviation "MST". This made sense, as that's what "MST" means elsewhere in North America. This new change, if it becomes law, won't be so easy to deal with. It will likely cause "Pacific Time" to be synonymous with -07 and "Mountain Time" to be synonymous with -06 in popular usage, which means that the entries for America/Whitehorse and America/Dawson will need to change from "MST" to something else, as "MST" will be misleading. It's been longstanding tzdb practice to model permanent DST as standard time. Admittedly this practice has so far been employed only for locations like Argentina that have fewer users. Still, the precedent is there and is consistent with the traditional meaning of standard time. There's another issue here: permanent DST is more likely to break software applications. For example, permanent DST in California that is called "PDT" and is 7 hours behind Greenwich would entail a POSIX-style TZ string like TZ='XXX6PDT7,0/0,J365/23' that means "California's standard time is 6 hours behind Greenwich, but it springs backward to 7 hours behind Greenwich on January 1 at 00:00 and springs forward on December 31 at 23:00, so it's actually on daylight saving time all year". I suspect these oddball TZ strings would break applications, and I doubt whether this approach would be wise even if it barely conforms to the standards.
On Thu, Mar 17, 2022 at 7:14 PM Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
On 3/17/22 14:31, Chris Walton via tz wrote:
Yukon recently did the same thing.
When Yukon did that, we modeled that as America/Whitehorse and America/Dawson being on -07 standard time all year, with the abbreviation "MST". This made sense, as that's what "MST" means elsewhere in North America.
This new change, if it becomes law, won't be so easy to deal with. It will likely cause "Pacific Time" to be synonymous with -07 and "Mountain Time" to be synonymous with -06 in popular usage, which means that the entries for America/Whitehorse and America/Dawson will need to change from "MST" to something else, as "MST" will be misleading.
Yes. Under option #4 (from the options I presented in another email thread), the following zones would all need to be reconfigured to use *UTC-07* and the "*PST*" abbreviation year-round: •America/Los_Angeles •America/Phoenix •America/Vancouver •America/Creston •America/Dawson_Creek •America/Fort_Nelson •America/Whitehorse •America/Dawson •America/Hermosillo •PST One west coast zone that could be problematic is *America/Tijuana*. If it follows the US and moves to permanent *UTC-07*, then it can simply be added to the list above. Otherwise, under option #4, it has to start using *AKST/AKDT* which is admittedly not what anybody will wish for. And then there is "*PST8PDT*". This one might need to be abandoned no matter what path we take. -chris
It appears that Paul Eggert via tz <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> said:
This new change, if it becomes law, won't be so easy to deal with.
Apparently some senators didn't know this bill was coming to the floor, and a few are annoyed: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/paulmcleod/daylight-saving-time-senate So who knows how it will do in the House.
On 2022-03-18 07:14:52 (+0800), Paul Eggert via tz wrote:
On 3/17/22 14:31, Chris Walton via tz wrote:
Yukon recently did the same thing.
When Yukon did that, we modeled that as America/Whitehorse and America/Dawson being on -07 standard time all year, with the abbreviation "MST". This made sense, as that's what "MST" means elsewhere in North America.
This new change, if it becomes law, won't be so easy to deal with. It will likely cause "Pacific Time" to be synonymous with -07 and "Mountain Time" to be synonymous with -06 in popular usage, which means that the entries for America/Whitehorse and America/Dawson will need to change from "MST" to something else, as "MST" will be misleading.
The abbreviations are going to be misleading no matter what. It's Malaysian Standard Time according to the National Metrology Institute of Malaysia https://mst.sirim.my. As I pointed out in another thread, I believe we should simply do away with these abbreviations and track only offsets. Overlays such as CLDR could take our "-7" and turn it into "Pacific Time" if they wanted to.
It's been longstanding tzdb practice to model permanent DST as standard time. Admittedly this practice has so far been employed only for locations like Argentina that have fewer users. Still, the precedent is there and is consistent with the traditional meaning of standard time.
There's another issue here: permanent DST is more likely to break software applications. For example, permanent DST in California that is called "PDT" and is 7 hours behind Greenwich would entail a POSIX-style TZ string like TZ='XXX6PDT7,0/0,J365/23' that means "California's standard time is 6 hours behind Greenwich, but it springs backward to 7 hours behind Greenwich on January 1 at 00:00 and springs forward on December 31 at 23:00, so it's actually on daylight saving time all year". I suspect these oddball TZ strings would break applications, and I doubt whether this approach would be wise even if it barely conforms to the standards.
How we model this in tzdb will presumably have to depend on how the final legislation is written. If it ends up being permanent daylight saving, and the definitions of the standard offsets are unchanged, then software will expect the tm_isdst flag to be set. It's worth remembering that politicians assign a rather more flexible definition to the word "permanent" than laymen. I think the modelling of tm_isdst is a completely orthogonal discussion to what the abbreviations end up being. And a much more important one! Philip -- Philip Paeps Senior Reality Engineer Alternative Enterprises
On Mar 17, 2022, at 19:14, Paul Eggert via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
It's been longstanding tzdb practice to model permanent DST as standard time. Admittedly this practice has so far been employed only for locations like Argentina that have fewer users. Still, the precedent is there and is consistent with the traditional meaning of standard time.
There's another issue here: permanent DST is more likely to break software applications. For example, permanent DST in California that is called "PDT" and is 7 hours behind Greenwich would entail a POSIX-style TZ string like TZ='XXX6PDT7,0/0,J365/23' that means "California's standard time is 6 hours behind Greenwich, but it springs backward to 7 hours behind Greenwich on January 1 at 00:00 and springs forward on December 31 at 23:00, so it's actually on daylight saving time all year". I suspect these oddball TZ strings would break applications, and I doubt whether this approach would be wise even if it barely conforms to the standards.
Ah, I did not know this! Thank you Paul. That does push things very strongly towards the ‘normalize everything as Standard Time’ approach. Cheers! |---------------------------------------------------------------------| | Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Chief Developer | | | Paravel Systems | |---------------------------------------------------------------------| | A room without books is like a body without a soul. | | | | -- Cicero | |---------------------------------------------------------------------|
But it does *not* change section 263. This means that the official US names of the time zones change, which is really stupid. Since Hawaii, Samoa, and Guam do not use daylight time, Hawaii will now be in Alaska standard time, Samoa in Hawaii-Aleutian standard time, and Guam in a time zone with no name.
Not necessarily. Hawaii-Aleutian standard time will become UTC-9. I don't know what legislation says what time is used in Hawaii, but if it uses that name then time in Hawaii will jump forward one hour on the date the law comes into effect.
Hawaii has not observed daylight saving time since war time ended in 1945 and has been at UTC-10 since they moved from UTC-10:30 in 1947. I am quite sure they have no interest in changing their time zone now, and certainly not a hour in the wrong direction. Solar time in Honolulu is about UTC-10:40. Given the lack of debate when the Senate passed this bill, I would be surprised if any of the senators understood what they did. Regards, John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
participants (8)
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Chris Walton -
Clive D.W. Feather -
Fred Gleason -
John Levine -
John R Levine
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Max Harmony -
Paul Eggert -
Philip Paeps