Markus Kuhn wrote:

Peter Hullah <Peter.Hullah@eurocontrol.fr> writes:

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Simple. "Middle European Time" is not the English translation of "Mitteleuropaeische Zeit", "Central European Time" is! We don't say, and never have said, "Middle Europe" in English.

Ok, perhaps you are right here. What term uses the EU document in which the summer time switching rules are announced?

I have no idea, but it's quite probable that they could have used MET, having found it in some standard or other. It doesn't make the standard correct just because the EU uses it.

The official German term "Weltzeit" also does not translate into "world time" but into "universal time" in English.

Which is crazy since it has nothing to do with the universe and lots to do with the world! It strikes me as somewhat arrogant, and must really annoy the green men on their planet near alpha-centuri!!

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Just watch Sky TV, EuroSport TV, BBC Prime, or listen to Radio Luxemburg (if it's still on the air in English on 208m as it was "when I was a kid"

What the TV and radio stations use does not necessarily indicate what is correct terminology. Journalists tend to be pretty ignorant about such topics often.

They generally use what their audience is accustomed to using - there's no point in communicating with people in a way they don't understand! (It's only places like France which forbid journalists from using other than the "correct terminology" and even then, it only applies to journalists paid by the state.) In this case, their English-speaking audience talks about Romania/Bulgaria/etc being in Central Europe, not in "Middle Europe". They are not likely to take very kindly to some "international committee" changing their language for them for no apparent reason. "Correct terminology" should, at least, be based on correct usage. How would you feel if you were told that, from now on, you had to refer to "Zentraleuropa" because it was the translation of "Central Europe" which was the "correct terminology".

For example: BBC still says GMT, although the correct term has been Universal Time (UT) since 1972 (when I was an exactly 1.00 year old kid ;-). Astronomers have been using the term Universal Time even since a conference in 1928.

I was under the impression that the correct term was "Coordinated Universal Time" and its abbrevation was "UTC" ("CUT" having, so I heard, been ruled out as it's a vulgar word in Dutch!) Again, the BBC uses what its audience understands - GMT and BST. The French say "Heure d'hiver" and "Heure d'ete" and, when setting up computers' timezones, abbreviate them to "HIV" and "ETE". It has nothing to do with the "official name" of the time zone. On the other hand, if it had been decided to call retain the name "GMT" I can't imagine it being changed to "Greenwich Average Time" on the whim of a committee. I don't, therefore, see why such a committee has decided to rename "CET", which is perfectly good English, understood by nearly every English-speaker and has been in use for ages, to "MET" which is none of these. My original question was "Why?". I am sure that there must be a good reason for this term's being the way it is. Is "CET" a swear-word in some other language? -- Peter H.C. Hullah Technical Services mailto:Peter.Hullah@eurocontrol.fr EUROCONTROL Experimental Centre Phone: +33 1 69 88 75 49 BP 15, Rue des Bordes, Fax: +33 1 60 85 15 04 91222 BRETIGNY SUR ORGE CEDEX France