Why is `Etc/UCT` not an alias of `Etc/UTC`?
They seem to refer to the same thing, so it doesn't make much sense to me why they're considered different. I also looked in the relevant file in the source, `/etcetera`, and there doesn't seem to be any rationale for it. Was this an oversight? ----- Isiah Meadows contact@isiahmeadows.com www.isiahmeadows.com
On 3/4/19 4:29 PM, Isiah Meadows wrote:
They seem to refer to the same thing, so it doesn't make much sense to me why they're considered different.
They generate different abbreviations: $ TZ=Etc/UTC date; TZ=Etc/UCT date Tue Mar 5 19:45:10 UTC 2019 Tue Mar 5 19:45:10 UCT 2019
Is there a source or a story about where "UCT" came from? Or are we just further propagating a misspelling? -Matt ________________________________ From: tz <tz-bounces@iana.org> on behalf of Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> Sent: Tuesday, March 5, 2019 11:45 AM To: Isiah Meadows Cc: Time Zone Mailing List Subject: Re: [tz] Why is `Etc/UCT` not an alias of `Etc/UTC`? On 3/4/19 4:29 PM, Isiah Meadows wrote:
They seem to refer to the same thing, so it doesn't make much sense to me why they're considered different.
They generate different abbreviations: $ TZ=Etc/UTC date; TZ=Etc/UCT date Tue Mar 5 19:45:10 UTC 2019 Tue Mar 5 19:45:10 UCT 2019
My guess is that some people used the term "Universal Coordinated Time" before it got standardized to UTC. alan On 3/5/19 11:52 AM, Matt Johnson wrote:
Is there a source or a story about where "UCT" came from? Or are we just further propagating a misspelling?
-Matt ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From:* tz <tz-bounces@iana.org> on behalf of Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> *Sent:* Tuesday, March 5, 2019 11:45 AM *To:* Isiah Meadows *Cc:* Time Zone Mailing List *Subject:* Re: [tz] Why is `Etc/UCT` not an alias of `Etc/UTC`? On 3/4/19 4:29 PM, Isiah Meadows wrote:
They seem to refer to the same thing, so it doesn't make much sense to me why they're considered different.
They generate different abbreviations:
$ TZ=Etc/UTC date; TZ=Etc/UCT date Tue Mar 5 19:45:10 UTC 2019 Tue Mar 5 19:45:10 UCT 2019
Timeanddate.com says that UTC was a compromise between English and French speakers. https://www.timeanddate.com/time/utc-abbreviation.html On 3/5/2019 3:00 PM, Alan Perry wrote:
My guess is that some people used the term "Universal Coordinated Time" before it got standardized to UTC.
alan
On 3/5/19 11:52 AM, Matt Johnson wrote:
Is there a source or a story about where "UCT" came from? Or are we just further propagating a misspelling?
-Matt ------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Donald [|] --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
On Tue 2019-03-05T15:44:27-0500 Donald MacQueen hath writ:
Timeanddate.com says that UTC was a compromise between English and French speakers.
There is no contemporary evidence to support this myth. By the 1950s various radio broadcast time signals were using different expressions to correct the raw time observations to a more uniform and smooth time scale. In a pattern repeated over decades of history, any differences of broadcast time signals were deemed intolerable and demanded immediate changes even if the mechanisms for those changes were not specified and not tested in actual use. At Dublin in 1955 the IAU decreed that everyone should use the same expressions and that all broadcasts should be the seasonally smoothed version. In publications of the time service bureaus the three versions of UT acquired the names English UT0, UT1, UT2 French TU0, TU1, TU2 both sets used with and without embedded full stop (.) characters. Every indication from the literature over time is that the three variations of Universal Time which were decided at IAU 1955 evolved along the same pattern to become TUC and UTC. (The person who first used "TUC" in print later explicitly disavowed having invented that notation.) Then in the 1970s came the era when various agencies recommended use of a single abbreviation without embedded periods. -- Steve Allen <sla@ucolick.org> WGS-84 (GPS) UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB 260 Natural Sciences II, Room 165 Lat +36.99855 1156 High Street Voice: +1 831 459 3046 Lng -122.06015 Santa Cruz, CA 95064 https://www.ucolick.org/~sla/ Hgt +250 m
Steve Allen said:
At Dublin in 1955 the IAU decreed that everyone should use the same expressions and that all broadcasts should be the seasonally smoothed version. In publications of the time service bureaus the three versions of UT acquired the names English UT0, UT1, UT2 French TU0, TU1, TU2 both sets used with and without embedded full stop (.) characters.
Long ago I read somewhere that the 0, 1, 2, and later C were all subscripts. Is there any truth in that? -- 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 Tue 2019-03-05T21:27:31+0000 Clive D.W. Feather hath writ:
Long ago I read somewhere that the 0, 1, 2, and later C were all subscripts. Is there any truth in that?
Documents from BIH and IAU which were typeset using subscripts for other notations do not use subscripts for UTx. -- Steve Allen <sla@ucolick.org> WGS-84 (GPS) UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB 260 Natural Sciences II, Room 165 Lat +36.99855 1156 High Street Voice: +1 831 459 3046 Lng -122.06015 Santa Cruz, CA 95064 https://www.ucolick.org/~sla/ Hgt +250 m
On Tue 2019-03-05T12:00:59-0800 Alan Perry hath writ:
My guess is that some people used the term "Universal Coordinated Time" before it got standardized to UTC.
The agreement that radio broadcast time signals would be coordinated internationally based on cesium frequency standards originated during tea time at the house of long time Greenwich Observatory Time Service staff member H.M. Smith in 1959. Initial coordination between UK and US began in 1960, and full agreement on the mechanism was in place by 1961. In 1961 the IAU and then in 1963 the CCIR recommended every that time broadcast should be coordinated, but they did not give a name, and many broadcasts were not coordinated until the 1970s. The first printed instance of a name was French T.U.C. in 1965, but the notion of coordination remained unknown outside of the time service community. At the beginning of 1974 NBS station WWV started announcing as Coordinated Universal Time. In 1974 July the CCIR first used "UTC" in Recommendation 460-1. In 1975 June the CGPM used "UTC" in resolution 5. In 1976 August the IAU recommended "UTC" to be used in all languages. In 1978 June CCIR Recommendation 536 recognized the nomenclature from the 1975 CGPM and that "UTC" should be used in all languages. So there were 5 years without any abbreviation in print, 15 years without any official designation of name, and after 20 years most of the official documents were largely unavailable. Even within the time service community there are many variations on the nomenclature. -- Steve Allen <sla@ucolick.org> WGS-84 (GPS) UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB 260 Natural Sciences II, Room 165 Lat +36.99855 1156 High Street Voice: +1 831 459 3046 Lng -122.06015 Santa Cruz, CA 95064 https://www.ucolick.org/~sla/ Hgt +250 m
On 3/5/19 12:45 PM, Steve Allen wrote:
My guess is that some people used the term "Universal Coordinated Time" before it got standardized to UTC. The agreement that radio broadcast time signals would be coordinated internationally based on cesium frequency standards originated during tea time at the house of long time Greenwich Observatory Time Service staff member H.M. Smith in 1959. Initial coordination between UK and US began in 1960, and full agreement on the mechanism was in place by
On Tue 2019-03-05T12:00:59-0800 Alan Perry hath writ: 1961. In 1961 the IAU and then in 1963 the CCIR recommended every that time broadcast should be coordinated, but they did not give a name, and many broadcasts were not coordinated until the 1970s. The first printed instance of a name was French T.U.C. in 1965, but the notion of coordination remained unknown outside of the time service community.
At the beginning of 1974 NBS station WWV started announcing as Coordinated Universal Time. In 1974 July the CCIR first used "UTC" in Recommendation 460-1. In 1975 June the CGPM used "UTC" in resolution 5. In 1976 August the IAU recommended "UTC" to be used in all languages. In 1978 June CCIR Recommendation 536 recognized the nomenclature from the 1975 CGPM and that "UTC" should be used in all languages.
So there were 5 years without any abbreviation in print, 15 years without any official designation of name, and after 20 years most of the official documents were largely unavailable. Even within the time service community there are many variations on the nomenclature. Understood, but the question concerned "UCT". My comment was in response to a suggestion that it was a misspelling.
If it were simply a misspelling, then it seems like it should be an alias for UTC. But it isn't. Then again, even if some people used "universal coordinated time" instead of "coordinated universal time" (like WWV says), it seems like it would still be an alias for UTC. So, it comes back to why isn't it an alias for UTC. alan
-- Steve Allen <sla@ucolick.org> WGS-84 (GPS) UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB 260 Natural Sciences II, Room 165 Lat +36.99855 1156 High Street Voice: +1 831 459 3046 Lng -122.06015 Santa Cruz, CA 95064 https://www.ucolick.org/~sla/ Hgt +250 m
So basically just back-compat? ----- Isiah Meadows contact@isiahmeadows.com www.isiahmeadows.com On Tue, Mar 5, 2019 at 2:45 PM Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
On 3/4/19 4:29 PM, Isiah Meadows wrote:
They seem to refer to the same thing, so it doesn't make much sense to me why they're considered different.
They generate different abbreviations:
$ TZ=Etc/UTC date; TZ=Etc/UCT date Tue Mar 5 19:45:10 UTC 2019 Tue Mar 5 19:45:10 UCT 2019
On 3/5/19 12:00 PM, Isiah Meadows wrote:
So basically just back-compat?
That's one reason it's there, yes. My impression is that "UCT" is used on occasion as seen in the citations below, although it's by far less common than "UTC". The question is whether a shell command like "TZ=Etc/UCT date" should generate the abbreviation "UCT" (perpetuating the "typo") or "UTC" ("correcting" it). I am quoting the words "typo" and "correcting" so as not to prejudge the matter. Some sample uses of "UCT": Gray JE, Machlan HE, Allan DW. The effect of humidity on commercial cesium beam atomic clocks. Proc 42nd Ann Freq Control Symp 1988, 514-518. https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/FREQ.1988.27649 "The implications of such changes are quite significant in the generation of International Atomic Time (TAI) and of Universal Coordinated Time (UCT)." The authors were from the Time & Frequency Division, NIST. Kouba J. Relativistic time transformations in GPS. GPS Solutions (2002) 5: 1. https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00012907 "It is interesting to note that TT, TAI, and UTC (the Universal Coordinated Time) all have nominally the same ..." The authorwas from the Geodetic Survey Division, Natural Resources Canada. Messerschmit DG. Relativistic Timekeeping, Motion, and Gravity in Distributed Systems. Proc IEEE, vol. 105, no. 8, pp. 1511-1573, Aug. 2017. https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JPROC.2017.2717980 "Universal coordinated time (UTC) is the common civil definition of time." The author is an emitus professor in the EECS dept, UC Berkeley. Freeman RL. Standard time and frequency. Reference Manual for Telecommunications Engineering, R. L. Freeman (Ed.) (2002). https://doi.org/10.1002/0471208051.fre035 "Another necessity, in some cases, is to be able to derive universal coordinated time (UCT) or a comparable time scale." Freeman's a widely-published telecom author.
Okay. I was just under the impression UTC and UCT are the same and thus have little reason to be distinct. It just seemed odd they were different, especially when they're used synonymously, and knowing tzdata is so broadly used for basically everything, I could reasonably see a ton of people relying on the non-aliasing behavior. The citations seem interesting, so it is definitely worth a mountain and three fourths of testing if you were to make any changes to `Etc/UCT`. ----- Isiah Meadows contact@isiahmeadows.com www.isiahmeadows.com On Tue, Mar 5, 2019 at 4:45 PM Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
On 3/5/19 12:00 PM, Isiah Meadows wrote:
So basically just back-compat?
That's one reason it's there, yes.
My impression is that "UCT" is used on occasion as seen in the citations below, although it's by far less common than "UTC". The question is whether a shell command like "TZ=Etc/UCT date" should generate the abbreviation "UCT" (perpetuating the "typo") or "UTC" ("correcting" it). I am quoting the words "typo" and "correcting" so as not to prejudge the matter.
Some sample uses of "UCT":
Gray JE, Machlan HE, Allan DW. The effect of humidity on commercial cesium beam atomic clocks. Proc 42nd Ann Freq Control Symp 1988, 514-518. https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/FREQ.1988.27649 "The implications of such changes are quite significant in the generation of International Atomic Time (TAI) and of Universal Coordinated Time (UCT)." The authors were from the Time & Frequency Division, NIST.
Kouba J. Relativistic time transformations in GPS. GPS Solutions (2002) 5: 1. https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00012907 "It is interesting to note that TT, TAI, and UTC (the Universal Coordinated Time) all have nominally the same ..." The authorwas from the Geodetic Survey Division, Natural Resources Canada.
Messerschmit DG. Relativistic Timekeeping, Motion, and Gravity in Distributed Systems. Proc IEEE, vol. 105, no. 8, pp. 1511-1573, Aug. 2017. https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JPROC.2017.2717980 "Universal coordinated time (UTC) is the common civil definition of time." The author is an emitus professor in the EECS dept, UC Berkeley.
Freeman RL. Standard time and frequency. Reference Manual for Telecommunications Engineering, R. L. Freeman (Ed.) (2002). https://doi.org/10.1002/0471208051.fre035 "Another necessity, in some cases, is to be able to derive universal coordinated time (UCT) or a comparable time scale." Freeman's a widely-published telecom author.
A maintenance guess: there would be more complaints about setting TZ to UTC and getting UCT as an abbreviation than there are about UTC and UCT not being links. @dashdashado
I was referring to setting TZ to UCT and getting UTC, not the other way around. Hope this clarifies. (According to Wikipedia, "UCT" and all of its variants are deprecated with URLs linking to the article on UTC, hence part of my question.) ----- Isiah Meadows contact@isiahmeadows.com www.isiahmeadows.com On Tue, Mar 5, 2019 at 5:27 PM Arthur David Olson <arthurdavidolson@gmail.com> wrote:
A maintenance guess: there would be more complaints about setting TZ to UTC and getting UCT as an abbreviation than there are about UTC and UCT not being links.
@dashdashado
On Mar 5, 2019, at 2:27 PM, Arthur David Olson <arthurdavidolson@gmail.com> wrote:
A maintenance guess: there would be more complaints about setting TZ to UTC and getting UCT as an abbreviation than there are about UTC and UCT not being links.
What about complaints about setting TZ to UCT and getting UTC as an abbreviation? Is there any information about whether "UTC" or "UCT" is the more commonly used abbreviation in documents in English?
Guy Harris <guy@alum.mit.edu> wrote on Tue, 5 Mar 2019 at 03:07:31 PM -0800 in <AF55BED5-E2B3-4E40-835C-65D98C92FB17@alum.mit.edu>:
Is there any information about whether "UTC" or "UCT" is the more commonly used abbreviation in documents in English?
Huh? Isn't it clear that essentially *no one* uses "UCT" ever? --jhawk@mit.edu John Hawkinson
On 2019-03-05 16:14, John Hawkinson wrote:
Guy Harris wrote on Tue, 5 Mar 2019 at 03:07:31 PM -0800:
Is there any information about whether "UTC" or "UCT" is the more commonly used abbreviation in documents in English? Huh? Isn't it clear that essentially *no one* uses "UCT" ever?
Most normal people who may have heard of UTC and wish to refer to it but don't care about correctness or details are likely to think of it as UCT or CUT: some bloggers, amateur journalists, and posters of that sort probably account for the non-UTC hits. [Consider the fantastical stories people come up when asked about non-obvious or imaginary topics by street interviewers for late night shows. Some Canadian shows sent comedians on to American campuses to gather academic views on Canadian and world topics, and the results were as inaccurate and fantastical as those expressed on late night shows: search for "Talking to Americans" e.g. a woman condemned Canada’s plan to pummel caribou to death with Timbits ;^> ] -- Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada This email may be disturbing to some readers as it contains too much technical detail. Reader discretion is advised.
Most normal people who may have heard of UTC and wish to refer to it but don't care about correctness or details are likely to think of it as UCT or CUT: some bloggers, amateur journalists, and posters of that sort probably account for the non-UTC hits.
I also see people labeling it "UST" (Universal Standard Time??). Should we add that too? Also, DST being labeled DLT, etc. Why propagate misinformation? IMHO, it sounds like the suggestion of linking Etc/UCT to Etc/UTC and dropping the UCT abbreviation would be appropriate. -Matt
On 3/8/19 10:02 AM, Matt Johnson wrote:
I also see people labeling it "UST" (Universal Standard Time??). Should we add that too? Also, DST being labeled DLT, etc. Why propagate misinformation?
IMHO, it sounds like the suggestion of linking Etc/UCT to Etc/UTC and dropping the UCT abbreviation would be appropriate.
Sounds reasonable. Proposed patch attached.
On 3/5/19 3:07 PM, Guy Harris wrote:
Is there any information about whether "UTC" or "UCT" is the more commonly used abbreviation in documents in English?
"UTC" is far more common. For example, for me Google reports about 4,220 hits for the query "Universal Coordinated Time (UCT)" and about 1,080,000 hits for "Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)". For Google Scholar the numbers are 210 and 11,800 respectively. For Google Books they are 493 and 12,500 respectively. In all cases the double-quote characters were in the query. My vague impression is that "UCT" was formerly more popular than it is now, but it's never been as popular as "UTC".
I came up with a somewhat more permissive set of queries that seem to show a similar disparity in usage: - '"Universal Coordinated Time" "UCT"': about 9,620 results in search, 344 in Scholar - '"Coordinated Universal Time" "UTC"': about 2,580,000 results in search, 17,900 in Scholar - '"Universal Coordinated Time" "UCT" -"UTC"': about 4,730 results in search, 256 in Scholar - '"Coordinated Universal Time" "UTC" -"UCT"': about 2,250,000 results in search, 17,600 in Scholar The first two show just raw mentions of each, while the second two captures how often people exclusively use one or the other. And it paints an even starker picture. Doing some statistics: - It appears about 4,870 search results and 88 Scholar results from a UCT-based search mentioned both UTC and UCT, and about 330,000 search results and 300 Scholar results from a UTC-based search mentioned both. - If you convert those into percentages, I get about 50.8% of all search results and 25.6% of all Scholar results mentioning both in a UCT-based search, but only about 12.8% of all search results and 1.8% of all Scholar results mentioning both in a UTC-based search. Initially, I tried '"Universal Coordinated Time" UCT' without quoting 'UCT', and Google's search engine thought I meant to type 'UTC' instead, assuming some sort of mistake I'm guessing. This itself could be considered pretty telling. (It's also why I quoted both 'UCT' and 'UTC' in all four searches.) It's also telling that excluding the UTC acronym from the UCT search results took away literally over half of the search results. Note: I excluded the surrounding single quotes in each search. Just to reiterate, I'm just coming here curious why the two are distinct names in the database and curious if "fixing" the redundancy would break much, not necessarily saying it *has* to be changed. I have very little stake here personally. ----- Isiah Meadows contact@isiahmeadows.com www.isiahmeadows.com On Tue, Mar 5, 2019 at 6:21 PM Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
On 3/5/19 3:07 PM, Guy Harris wrote:
Is there any information about whether "UTC" or "UCT" is the more commonly used abbreviation in documents in English?
"UTC" is far more common. For example, for me Google reports about 4,220 hits for the query "Universal Coordinated Time (UCT)" and about 1,080,000 hits for "Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)". For Google Scholar the numbers are 210 and 11,800 respectively. For Google Books they are 493 and 12,500 respectively. In all cases the double-quote characters were in the query.
My vague impression is that "UCT" was formerly more popular than it is now, but it's never been as popular as "UTC".
On 2019-03-05 17:13, Isiah Meadows wrote: > On Tue, Mar 5, 2019 at 6:21 PM Paul Eggert wrote: >> On 3/5/19 3:07 PM, Guy Harris wrote: >>> Is there any information about whether "UTC" or "UCT" is the more >>> commonly used abbreviation in documents in English? >> "UTC" is far more common. For example, for me Google reports about 4,220 >> hits for the query "Universal Coordinated Time (UCT)" and about 1,080,000 >> hits for "Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)". For Google Scholar the numbers >> are 210 and 11,800 respectively. For Google Books they are 493 and 12,500 >> respectively. In all cases the double-quote characters were in the query. >> My vague impression is that "UCT" was formerly more popular than it is >> now, but it's never been as popular as "UTC". > I came up with a somewhat more permissive set of queries that seem to show a > similar disparity in usage: > - '"Universal Coordinated Time" "UCT"': about 9,620 results in search, > 344 in Scholar > - '"Coordinated Universal Time" "UTC"': about 2,580,000 results in > search, 17,900 in Scholar > - '"Universal Coordinated Time" "UCT" -"UTC"': about 4,730 results in > search, 256 in Scholar > - '"Coordinated Universal Time" "UTC" -"UCT"': about 2,250,000 results > in search, 17,600 in Scholar > The first two show just raw mentions of each, while the second two > captures how often people exclusively use one or the other. And it > paints an even starker picture. Doing some statistics: > - It appears about 4,870 search results and 88 Scholar results from a > UCT-based search mentioned both UTC and UCT, and about 330,000 search > results and 300 Scholar results from a UTC-based search mentioned > both. > - If you convert those into percentages, I get about 50.8% of all > search results and 25.6% of all Scholar results mentioning both in a > UCT-based search, but only about 12.8% of all search results and 1.8% > of all Scholar results mentioning both in a UTC-based search. > Initially, I tried '"Universal Coordinated Time" UCT' without quoting > 'UCT', and Google's search engine thought I meant to type 'UTC' > instead, assuming some sort of mistake I'm guessing. This itself could > be considered pretty telling. (It's also why I quoted both 'UCT' and > 'UTC' in all four searches.) It's also telling that excluding the UTC > acronym from the UCT search results took away literally over half of > the search results. > Note: I excluded the surrounding single quotes in each search. > Just to reiterate, I'm just coming here curious why the two are > distinct names in the database and curious if "fixing" the redundancy > would break much, not necessarily saying it *has* to be changed. I > have very little stake here personally. 113,000, 2,860, 1,610 for "Coordinated Universal Time" "CUT" on Google, Scholar, and Books -- Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada This email may be disturbing to some readers as it contains too much technical detail. Reader discretion is advised.
On Mar 5, 2019, at 3:21 PM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
On 3/5/19 3:07 PM, Guy Harris wrote:
Is there any information about whether "UTC" or "UCT" is the more commonly used abbreviation in documents in English?
"UTC" is far more common. For example, for me Google reports about 4,220 hits for the query "Universal Coordinated Time (UCT)" and about 1,080,000 hits for "Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)". For Google Scholar the numbers are 210 and 11,800 respectively. For Google Books they are 493 and 12,500 respectively. In all cases the double-quote characters were in the query.
My vague impression is that "UCT" was formerly more popular than it is now, but it's never been as popular as "UTC".
As I suspected. So, yes, if Etc/UTC were to be an alias for Etc/UCT, and thus gave UTC as the abbreviation, there would probably be a lot of pushback. If, however, Etc/UCT were an alias for Etc/UTC, it would give UTC as the abbreviation, and there might not be much pushback from that.
And just to clarify, I was suggesting initially to do the second, make `Etc/UCT` an alias for `Etc/UTC`. ----- Isiah Meadows contact@isiahmeadows.com www.isiahmeadows.com On Tue, Mar 5, 2019 at 8:17 PM Guy Harris <guy@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
On Mar 5, 2019, at 3:21 PM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
On 3/5/19 3:07 PM, Guy Harris wrote:
Is there any information about whether "UTC" or "UCT" is the more commonly used abbreviation in documents in English?
"UTC" is far more common. For example, for me Google reports about 4,220 hits for the query "Universal Coordinated Time (UCT)" and about 1,080,000 hits for "Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)". For Google Scholar the numbers are 210 and 11,800 respectively. For Google Books they are 493 and 12,500 respectively. In all cases the double-quote characters were in the query.
My vague impression is that "UCT" was formerly more popular than it is now, but it's never been as popular as "UTC".
As I suspected.
So, yes, if Etc/UTC were to be an alias for Etc/UCT, and thus gave UTC as the abbreviation, there would probably be a lot of pushback.
If, however, Etc/UCT were an alias for Etc/UTC, it would give UTC as the abbreviation, and there might not be much pushback from that.
participants (11)
-
Alan Perry -
Arthur David Olson -
Brian Inglis -
Clive D.W. Feather -
Donald MacQueen -
Guy Harris -
Isiah Meadows -
John Hawkinson -
Matt Johnson -
Paul Eggert -
Steve Allen