Suggesting to swap tag [kyiv] and its synonym [kiev]

Question

Updated September 2020

The original request has been declined by a moderator arguing that:

And our current standard is to use Wikipedia for reference, which lists the city as Kiev currently. Once Wikipedia changes their mind we can change our tags as well.

Now that Wikipedia did change their mind, and the main article is Kyiv, it seems like a good time to keep a moderator's word and fulfill the request laid out in the title.

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Details

On Travel.SE, the main tag for the capital of Ukraine is kiev, while kyiv is marked a synonym.

The main article on Wikipedia is Kyiv. Since other spellings still retain their historic value, they are preserved as synonyms.

As listed here,

1. all major English publications that used their own stylebook have made updates to their styleguides and now use Kyiv spelling,
2. all major English publications that use standard stylebooks (e.g., Associated Press Stylebook or Canadian Press Stylebook) are now following recent updates in those styleguides and are now using Kyiv,
3. IATA has switched to Kyiv and therefore all international airports have updated their English spelling to Kyiv,
4. BGN has switched to Kyiv and, therefore, all major geographical bodies followed suite and are now using Kyiv and, lastly,
5. The Library of Congress has switched to Kyiv and, therefore, all major library organizations followed suite and are now using Kyiv.

The list goes on linking to about 20 public statements by major Air, News, and state organizations and agencies.

The #3 above seems the be the most relevant to the Travel site. IATA is the entity to regulate what spelling is used for airport names.

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Suggested Solution

To keep this site on a par with the history,
To avoid any further confusion to travelers,
I suggest to swap the main tag and its synonym, making kyiv the main one.

Answer 1

The established standard is to follow Wikipedia's names; after more than 17 years of discussion and 13 years of failed proposals to resolve the matter, they have elected to go with Kyiv for the main article. They have also established that no proposal to revert the name or propose another alternative may be tendered until 16 September 2021.

The change of sentiment as noted in the revised proposal follows the decision of non-political authorities like the U.S. Board on Geographic Names and Library of Congress to prefer this spelling, as well as its adoption by major journalistic organizations including the BBC and the Associated Press, all in 2019.

Given all this, I am mollified that making the primary tag kyiv would be a minor but nevertheless real and practical improvement of the Stack, and see no reason why the standard naming policy should not be enforced.

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This answer was accepted, but as of 2021-03-04 the primary tag is still at kiev; it's unclear to me whether a moderator attempted the rename but it did not succeed, whether the change requires staff intervention but staff were not notified, whether it requires staff intervention but staff have not executed the request, or whether it requires staff intervention but is stalled on account of a bug or system problem, or some other issue.

Answer 2

Update: renaming to Kyiv now that Wikipedia is updated

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I am going to decline this request as Kiev is still a much more common spelling than Kyiv. Tags don't necessarily have to follow the official spelling of a given place.

And our current standard is to use Wikipedia for reference, which lists the city as Kiev currently. Once Wikipedia changes their mind we can change our tags as well.

Answer 3

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from

Personally, I cede to a country/city/region the right to dictate its name; that is, to choose how it is pronounced, and spelled, in its national language. I'm not sure I cede to anyone the right to determine how their name should be rendered, worldwide, in all the other languages of the world.

I do think it's important that, whatever we do, it not be arbitrary. I agree that the UN is one body who might set a standard, but there are others. Previously, the policy was to do what Wikipedia does, and contrary to the OP's view above, that is what we seem to be reliably doing.

So although I think we can re-examine the policy at any time, we do have one, and I don't think we should be making exceptions to it simply because people feel strongly about the particular case.

Answer 4

Here are the uses on some websites.

British Airways  : Kiev
Google Flights   : Kiev
Google Maps      :       Kyiv
Lufthansa        : Kiev
Skyscanner       : Kiev, Kyiv
Turkish Airlines : Kiev
Yandex.Maps      :       Kyiv

EDIT: I changed my opinion and now I'm totally neutral about OP's suggestion. Keeping the post just for the table above.

Answer 5

1. Stack Exchange doesn't seem allow for non-A-Z tags.
2. If we'd do the same for Bangkok the tag would be, and I'm not joking: กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุธยามหาดิลก ภพนพรัตน์ ราชธานีบุรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์ มหาสถาน อมรพิมาน อวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยะ วิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์

I think we should keep using English names, like Gothenburg instead of Göteborg (which would be Goteborg...).

Answer 6

That people from a country should define how others should write city names rises bad memories of its abuse for political purposes.

There is the renaming of foreign cities to German ones after the invasion of Poland and Yugoslavia (Warschau, Danzig and Laibach) and the corresponding renaming of German cities to Polish names after the war with the rearranged borders (Ustka, Bydgoszcz). Another example is the renaming of South Tyrol cities to Italian ones (Bozen-> Bolzano, Meran->Merano). There are countless examples where the ruling power tries to eradicate old names, often with prohibition and suppression of a language. That only raises bad blood.

And there is also the problem of having a majority of local people which are in power and favor one spelling, but which governments are internationally not/only partially recognized for political reasons. There is Abkhazia, China (for over 20 years!), North Cyprus, Kosovo. So whatever you want to decide, there will be trouble whatever path is chosen.

For this reason we should use an independent source of spelling, Wikipedia is now favored by most (I fear it is too easy to tweak it with political power games because it is editable, but so it goes).