On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 12:01 AM Doug Ewell via tz <[email protected]> wrote:
> There’s another problem, though. The tz database is not a gazetteer or other > official reference to the “correct” spelling of city names. The identifiers > in the tz database are not meant to be presented directly to users as part of > a UI. > > Rather, tzids are internal identifiers, sort of like variable names or URLs > or API endpoints. They are intended to be stable. When you change one, you > create an incompatibility with systems that expect the old name. > > The theory file says to “Use mainstream English spelling” in place names, > which often leads to requests like this on the basis that the locally > preferred spelling or transliteration must automatically be the mainstream > English spelling. That’s not reality. It takes time for another government’s > preference to take hold in English usage—we still don’t really use “Czechia” > in the US, and might never do so—but even if and when it finally does, the > stability problem remains. And you should change Rome to Roma! (this is a joke, I actually understand that the tzdb uses English names. Rome/Roma and Uzhgorod/Uzhhorod is the same case though, with the aggravation that Uzhgorod has been the official transliteration since the stone age and Uzhhorod is the result of a very recent change in the official transliteration...) > (Lest there be any misunderstanding, this has nothing to do with being > pro-Ukraine or pro-Russia.) Absolutely.
