Oscar van Vlijmen <o.van.vlijmen@tip.nl> writes:

I am NOT proposing to change the Theory rules, but I wonder: population count, popularity, media exposure all change, a capital hardly or not.

Actually, capitals change suprisingly often. E.g. Kazakhstan changed its capital in 1997, and then changed the capital's name in 1998. (Good thing they didn't use new time zone rules too, or we'd have had to track that mess.) Even China, the most populous country in the world, changed its capital twice in the last century (in 1928 and again in 1949) and there was a period in which the location of its capital was in serious dispute. Capitals are political creatures, and we are trying to avoid politics here as much as possible, so I don't want to give the "capitalness" of a city much weight.

Chung is a British transliteration (Wade, 1867), indeed: tch'ong is the French EFEO (1902) transliteration, but k'ing is the French transliteration for pinyin qing, whereas ch'ing would be the British transliteration.

The name "Chungking" is not a systematic transliteration; it is merely traditional. It's probably the weakest of the existing Chinese names, i.e. the one where there is the strongest reason to change, as I get the feeling that the Pinyin transliteration "Chongqing" is gaining wide popularity in ordinary English usage. Google reports 38k English-language hits for "Chongqing" and 21k for "Chungking", so if we were choosing now "Chongqing" might well be the winner. But I'm not sure that this is enough to change an established name. Oscar van Vlijmen <o.van.vlijmen@tip.nl> writes: Paul Hill writes:

Someone said there is the rule: every country gets at least one entry. Is this implemented in practice? Every country including all small countries that share zones (like the Caribbean)?

Yes. In hindsight this rule was probably unwise, as countries are also political creatures. Not sure I want to change it now, though.