> The short answer is simple: Ukrainians call their capital “Kyiv” (kee-yiv), the spelling, a transliteration of the Ukrainian Київ. The Russian version is “Kiev” (kee-yev).

> Not surprisingly, the Ukrainian government mounted a campaign four years ago to secure international approval for the name of its capital city. There is even a popular Twitter hashtag, #KyivNotKiev.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/25/how-to-pronoun...

The Ukrainian and Russian alphabets have different glyphs and pronunciations for a few letters. In Ukrainian, it is Ки́їв, and in Russian, it is Ки́ев. They Romanize differently, and it is considered a sign of solidarity with Ukraine to use their spelling/pronunciation.

Just wanted to note that the acute accent over the и (in both Russian and Ukrainian) indicates the stress and is only used in fairly narrow contexts such as dictionary entries.

Normally it's just Киев/Київ.

Thanks, I was just wondering about that.

Ukraine changed the "official" way to transliterate Ukrainian words from Cyrillic to English some time ago, to closer match the way it's actually pronounced. Plus some changes from Russian to Ukrainian when the country started promoting the Ukrainian language (they're very close, but not quite the same).

Kiev -> Kyiv. Kharkov -> Kharkiv. Zelensky should be spelt Zelenskiy (as per his official social media). Vladimir -> Volodymyr, Mikhail -> Mykhailo, etc...

> Zelenskiy (as per his official social media)

On his Twitter, he spells it Zelenskyy

On Instagram it's Zelenskiy. Also in Cyrillic the last 2 letters are different...

On his official government page [1] it's Zelenskyy. And on his passport, apparently.

[1] https://www.president.gov.ua

Similarly, as a non-European, when did the "Czech Republic" becomes "Czechia" (at least on Google Maps)?

> when did the "Czech Republic" becomes "Czechia"

"On 17 May 2016 the Permanent Mission of the Czech Republic to the United Nations informed the UN that the short name to be used for the country is Czechia." [1]

The official full name in English continues to be "the Czech Republic". [2]

[1] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/member-states/czechoslovakia

[2] https://unterm.un.org/unterm/Display/record/UNHQ/NA?Id=42750...

The official ISO shortname changed on Sept 28, 2016: https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:CZ.

Wikipedia has a good discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_the_Czech_Republic

Since you're out of the loop, FYI Swaziland is now Eswatini!

January 19, 2017.

Kiev was the Russian name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KyivNotKiev