The Ukrainian government adopted Kyiv as its standard Latinisation in 1995, making Kyiv mandatory for use in legislative and official acts. To equate a government request with popular will, however, seems misguided; an unquestioning equation of the whim of the country’s ruling politicians to the desire of its population appears especially fraught with danger, and frankly inappropriate, when we consider the changes and upheavals that have occurred in Ukraine over the last 20 years.
This is not to say that there is no popular will for a change of spelling. As we sit around the table, one of our editors brings up her decision to move to the Kyiv spelling in personal correspondence. It is difficult to ignore, she points out, passionate comments from some of our Ukrainian readers and contributors and her Ukrainian friends about the “incorrect” spelling of their capital city in our articles. If it is making some kind of statement to switch to Kyiv on our website, how much more of a statement is it to receive pitches about “Kyiv” and reply with reference to “Kiev”, our email chain a back-and-forth between the two versions of the city? Many people will be angry, she predicts, when we place their work within the context of a project bearing a title that they deem not only to be incorrect, but offensive. [...]
However, English-speakers are by and large still more familiar with Kiev. This is due, in part, to almost every major news organisation sticking with the conventional spelling. The BBC, Reuters, The New York Times and The Associated Press are just some of the big names that continue to use Kiev. Presumably in part because they fear that their readers are unfamiliar with the Ukrainian spelling. As our marketing manager points out, people simply aren't searching for Kyiv like they are for Kiev. Kyiv could cost us dearly if our stats take a hit.
“Why shouldn’t the media use Kiev?” we ponder. We do, after all, say Munich, not München, and Rome, not Roma. While it may be erroneous to insist that Kiev is “the Russian spelling”, which sets up a false dichotomy between “Ukrainian” and “Russian” spellings, insisting on the other hand that it is simply the international or English spelling (with an implied “end of story”), is an equally flawed approach. Such an argument is often put forward by those who wish to cast the whole question as irrelevant and brush aside any aversion to the spelling as unfounded or even petty. While their line of thinking is logical enough, this one-size-fits-all argument seems insufficient in its over-simplicity and reluctance to engage with the particularities of the situation. Nobody is talking, for example, about a conflict (of words or otherwise) between Italian and English speakers, as they are about tensions between Ukrainian and Russian speakers.
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