Talk:Kyiv

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I tried just to delete my message. 91.196.121.15 (talk) 14:28, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Spelling

Over on the English Wikipedia, there has been an acrimonious discussion of the spelling of the city's name. Fortunately, we have been spared such a spat. Still, we have a problem; to wit, our article has one spelling in the title but uses a different spelling with-out any explanation. One way or the other, this needs to be cleaned up (at the very least by putting a parenthetical note or spelling in). Kdammers (talk) 13:52, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

@Kdammers: If enwiki have came to such a consensus, we should move our article there too. --IWI (talk) 14:09, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

"Kiev" is universally used in British media; I've never seen the variant 'Kyev'. Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:03, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

@Macdonald-ross: the spelling is not "Kyev" but "Kyiv". Your claim isn't really backed up, as the Guardian, the BBC, along with AP and many others use Kyiv. You can see a full list of sources at the RM at en:Talk:Kyiv. --IWI (talk) 19:20, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Others include Reuters, Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. --IWI (talk) 19:26, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

There are studies; when asked what language they used "in everyday life" in the city, about 41% said they used both Russian and Ukraian, about 40% used only Russian, and the remaining 18% used only Ukranian link); Mother tongues: 64% Ukrainian, 24% Russian, 2% others Study from 2005, in Russian)en:/Kyiv#Ethnic_composition has more demographics. Pease also note: Urkaine and Russia currently disagree over the status of Crimea, and two other split-away cities. We should have the article at the most likely search term. In my opinion, this is our current situation. --Eptalon (talk) 20:13, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

What we have is a name that comes from Ukranian being spelt as if it is Russian (which goes back to the Soviet era really). The goverment actively campaigned for global media to spell it correctly, which they did. We follow what reliable sources do; most English language reliable sources now use "Kyiv". --IWI (talk) 20:17, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, but it's somewhat absurd to discuss which transliteration of the Ukrainian capital to use - Ukrainian or Russian. Lol. We still have the last two bastions, which will also fall over time - Odesa and Chornobyl.--vitaliyf261 (talk) 9:12, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Although I think Kiev is used more commonly in English, the usage of Kyiv seems far more widespread in mainstream media. One can only imagine there is something political about it, as we still use Milan over Milano or Venice over Venezia for the Italian cities. I think both are still used commonly, but if respected media outlets use Kyiv, we should probably use that. --Yottie ^=talk= 15:36, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Inclined to go with ukrainian one, it's ukraine capital not russia. Kiev redirect to the Kyiv. Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 16:31, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

@Yottie: But at the same time, we have switched from Bombay to Mumbai and Burma to Myanmar. "Venice" and "Milan" are ultimately derived from their Italian counterparts, whereas "Kiev" comes from Russian and "Kyiv" comes from Ukrainian. It's for these reasons that media have switched to Kyiv. --IWI (talk) 16:40, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

I presume the examples above are also political (in those instances, colonial heritage), similarly to Beijing/Peking. I think the change would make sense, I just don't think it's purely linguistic. --Yottie ^=talk= 16:59, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Kdammers, Macdonald-ross, Eptalon, Vitaliyf261, and Yottie: is there a consensus we can come to so we can close this discussion one way or the other. --IWI (talk) 15:23, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

  To be honest, I don't think there is clear consensus yet. A couple more opinions would be useful! Yottie ^=talk= 18:39, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

  I'll spell it out again: The city is bilingual Russian / Ukrainian "in everyday life". There's a conflict between Ukraine and Russia, over the Crimean peninsula, plus the splitaway cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, the two cities "became independent republics" (but no one recognised them). There has also been a civil war in Ukraine, since 2014. In this context, it is clear that there are also attempts to control public opinion / the media (-> this Wikipedia). It is our duty to remain as impartial as possible. In this context, I think that the solution we have now (Article under "Kiev", the Ukrainian spelling variation redirecting to "Kiew") is probably not a bad one. --Eptalon (talk) 19:02, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm afraid I disagree. I think our current solution is, as I indicated at the start of this thread, maybe the worst solution. Simple English Wikipedia aims at clarity. Using one spelling in the title but one or more other spellings without any linking to the title can be confusing to weak users of English (and punctilious others). I am neutral on whether we use 'Kiev' or 'Kyiv.' I think Yottie makes a salient point that much of the media (going along with the Ukrainian government?) uses the yi spelling whereas the general English-speaking public (still) uses the ie spelling. Maybe there is something in our policy guidelines or other choices (e.g. Gdansk/Danzig) that is relevant to this kind of situation.

Eptalon, when I entered "Kiew," I got an response that there was no article. When I entered "Kiev," I got a response that an article existed, with the article link right under the response. When I entered "Kyiv," I got "Create the page "Kyiv" on this wiki! See also the search results found" with a side-bar for Kiev as a sister project. So, it seems to be a bit of a minor mess.Kdammers (talk) 04:38, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Still disagree with Eptalon here. We rely on reliable sources, per our policy. Most use the Ukrainian name (no, not "spelling variant", name). The city is in Ukraine, the name of the city comes from Ukrainian. While many use Russian for ease of communication, most people in Ukraine speak Ukrainian as their first language. Using the Russian name makes no sense, and NPOV isn’t really a good argument either as deviating from reliable sources actually makes us appear Russia-leaning. Really, using the number of speakers here to draw conclusions is irrelevant, and to use this information to draw a conclusion here is original research or synthesis. In terms of our policies, most media in the English speaking world use "Kyiv" and that should really be it. To start discussing the politics of this and suggest that this is all part of some sort of media control is not what we are supposed to be doing. Discuss the sources against our policies. --IWI (talk) 04:55, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

When I look at other Wikipedias: German de:Kiew (different transliteration of the last letter), French: fr:Kiev, Spanish es:Kiev, Portuguese pt:Kiev, Italian: it:Kiev, Romanian: ro:Kiev, (Talking about the location of the main article here). Anything apparent? --Eptalon (talk) 05:19, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

As to to the spelling 'Kiew': As far as I can see, only DEWP uses that spelling. What I meant anbove: Redirect from the Ukrainian spelling to this article ('Kiev'). --Eptalon (talk) 05:30, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

There are a few consideration, 1. popularity in major English sources (don't forget we are catering to ESL), so if we can see the sources in these ESL majority countries will be useful, 2. It's in Ukraine, Ukraine language, so ukraine translation? 3. Have most people moved over to the Ukraine spelling so as to make it simpler to search? Here, locally, we still use Kiev but having it as ukrainan make sense, so maybe a move will be good? Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 14:15, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

As shown above, most English language sources now use "Kyiv". Really that is the main point here, as everything we do (including what we call this city) has to be verifiable. We can verify that most English language sources use "Kyiv". --IWI (talk) 14:27, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

In principle, I agree to the move. Per enwp too.Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 16:50, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

What-ever and when-ever our decision is, there should be a re-direct from the "losing" term to the article. Currently, this is not the case. Could some-body please make a re-direct. Kdammers (talk) 04:44, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

• • I just saw this message. I know I opened this Pandora's box, but I am not swayed one way or the other. On the other hand, I would like to stress my original point that the title is used nowhere in the article. This is easy for a native speaker to figure out, but it does a disservice to people whose grasp of English is not so advanced. So, I hope that either a consensus is "determined" or, barring that, that we at least include something that explicitly shows that the two spellings are for the same word. Kdammers (talk) 09:35, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Oopsie move

I moved the page before I noticed the discussion here... so I moved it back pending a decision. Operator873^talkconnect 14:09, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

@Operator873: The discussion here has been going on for over a month. Can you, please, summarize? --Perohanych (talk) 07:42, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

One more argument for renaming

Kiev was created in the English Wikipedia on February 24, 2002. However, on March 8, 2003, a proposal to rename the article to Kyiv was made on the article's discussion page. Since then, discussions have been going on continuously for more than 17 years, occupying 2,412,000 characters. If you print them on A4 paper, you would get a stack of paper 5 inches thick!

And as a result of the very long discussion the summary was in favor of moving Kiev to Kyiv, see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=978661752

Do we want to repeat such a 17-year discussion? I think we don't. --Perohanych (talk) 19:16, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Sorry to say so:

• While it is very nice EnWP renamed the article, wouldn't the same argument hold for other languages as well: Why didn't FrWP, EsWP, PtWp, ItWp... rename the article?
• We follow EnWP on many things, but we need to keep in mind that our target audience is different: If you are Romanian, or French, and you learn English as an addditional language, it would certainly be helpful to find the city at the same name. Let me make another example. Aachen is a city in Germany, of roughly 250.000 people (near Köln, which has about 1.1 million people). Anyway, almost everyone calls the city Aachen. The French sometimes call it Aix-la-Chapelle (for historical reasons). Where would you expect the main article to be, in our Wikipedia? - In terms of software development, this is called the en:Principle of least astonishment or principle of least surprise; Even if we are not talking aobut software development, I think it should equally apply
• Note, English is an official language in many places, amongst others in Ghana, Kenia, South Africa, or Papua New Guinea. If you go to any of these territories, which of the two forms will they recognize better?

In short: no, I don't want to repeat years of discussion; I simply want to point out that we need to discuss as well. So far, there hasn't really been a discussion on this Wikipedia.--Eptalon (talk) 13:43, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

• Very often, English wiki is dominated by U.S. academics, and is liable to get out of touch with ordinary people. The renaming of places has gone on almost without interruption for the last 40 years. It does harm to people with a basic school education. On this wiki we should be slow to change a name or title which is already widely understood. Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:41, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
• But it is not the case that the name “Kiev” is English, but is actually of Russian origin. Ukrainians take offence to this, because the place’s name is “Kyiv”. Every major English news (including British ones; this is not just American) source has done the same so there is no reason for us not to follow suit. Many have made their case and I think this can be closed by someone not involved now. --IWI (talk) 05:31, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Template (please add)

Please add, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Dnieper_River. Thank you. 89.8.169.100 (talk) 14:42, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

 Done --Synoman Barris (talk) 15:09, 27 February 2022 (UTC)