Kiev to Kyiv

Two alphabets, two spellings

The city is Київ in Ukrainian and Киев in Russian. English speakers long wrote and said “Kiev”, close to the Russian.^[1] Ukraine was ruled from Moscow and by other powers for long periods, and only after full independence in 1991 did many people outside start to treat Ukrainian as a separate language from Russian.^[1]

“Kyiv” is the Ukrainian name spelled in the Latin alphabet. In Ukrainian the first syllable is stressed and sounds like the “i” in “kid”, with the second vowel like the “ee” in “keel”.^[1] The city may or may not have been founded by a prince named Kyi.^[1]

#KyivNotKiev

In 2018 Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs began an online campaign, known as CorrectUA and #KyivNotKiev, to persuade foreign media and organisations to write Kyiv. In May 2019 Ukraine passed a law requiring Slavic place names, including Russian ones, to be spelled by Ukrainian standards.^[4]

The US Board on Geographic Names, which sets names for official US government use, had accepted Kyiv as a standard form in October 2006 but still allowed “Kiev”. At the request of Ukraine’s ambassador, Valeriy Chaliy, it made Kyiv the spelling in its international database from 17 June 2019.^[2] That database is used well beyond the United States, including for international flight listings, and airports such as Denmark’s Billund began showing “Kyiv”.^[2][4]

The newsrooms follow

On 14 August 2019 the AP Stylebook, which many American newspapers follow, changed to Kyiv, “in line with the Ukrainian government’s preferred transliteration to English and increasing usage”.^[3] The Guardian had already changed, and the New York Times did so later that year.^[4][1] The Kyiv Post itself had used the spelling since 1997.^[3]

The dish stayed chicken Kiev.^[3] Columbia Journalism Review compared the change to Peking becoming Beijing and Ceylon becoming Sri Lanka: the place stays the same, but English starts using the name its own people use.^[1]

“AP has changed its style for the capital of Ukraine to Kyiv, in line with the Ukrainian government’s preferred transliteration to English and increasing usage.”^[3]