KyivNotKiev

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KyivNotKiev (part of a wider campaign, CorrectUA) is an online campaign started by the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) together with the Center for strategical communications "StratCom Ukraine" on October 2, 2018 with a goal of persuading English language media and organizations to use Kyiv (derived from the Ukrainian language name) instead of Kiev (derived from the Russian language name) as the name of Ukrainian capital.

The motivation for the campaign is that the MFA, as well as the majority of Ukrainian citizens, considers the transliteration Kiev in English language to be a "Soviet colonial relic". The organization intends to strengthen Ukrainian identity by throwing away anything linking Ukraine to Soviet and imperial Russia. The campaign is run by the Department of Public Diplomacy of the MFA.

The transliteration Kyiv was legally approved by the Ukrainian government in 1995, since then it has tried, in one way or another, to make Kyiv more widely used abroad. At the international level, this transliteration was approved by the Tenth United Nations Conference on Standardization of Geographical Names, however even that did not make much difference. The transliteration Kiev is deeply rooted in the English language, so not only media and organizations use it, but it is also in everyday use. Prior to 2014, there were not many cases of switching to Kyiv, because many people outside Ukraine did not understand why should they or thought that this issue is "imposed by nationalists on purpose".

The name Kiev in English sometimes can be found inside Ukraine. For example, Ukraine International Airlines refused to switch to Kyiv for a long time.

What makes this campaign unusual is that the MFA does not do this alone, but invites the public to join. MFA asks Ukrainian citizens to create posts in social networks with hashtags #KyivNotKiev or #CorrectUA, tagging foreign media or organizations with demands to switch to Kyiv.

Beginning of the campaign

The "KyivNotKiev" campaign began with a two-week "marathon" wherein every one or two days the MFA published the title of some foreign media and Ukrainians started to snowball those media in social networks with requests to use Kyiv instead of Kiev, which was also followed by numerous Ukrainian social networks users putting "#KyivNotKiev" frames on their avatars. In this way, ten of the most influential (in the opinion of the MFA) English language global media were covered: Reuters, CNN, BBC News, Al Jazeera, Daily Mail, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and Euronews. Some of the Ukrainian top officials participated in this act: apart from foreign affairs minister Pavlo Klimkin, there also participated the action Minister of healthcare Ulana Suprun, Representative of Ukraine at the Council of Europe Dmytro Kuleba and the member of parliament Yehor Soboliev. The campaign saw the support of several thousands of Ukrainians, and the hashtag "#KyivNotKiev" had been seen by some 10 million social network users. During or shortly after this "marathon", BBC and The Guardian did start using Kyiv. Later, the campaign shifted its attention to foreign airports, which at the moment used Kiev almost exclusively.

CorrectUA

The "KyivNotKiev" campaign is part of the broader "CorrectUA" campaign, which advocates a change of name in English not only for Kiev but also for other Ukrainian cities whose English names are derived from Russian as well. Among those are Odessa instead of Odesa, Kharkov instead of Kharkiv, Lvov instead of Lviv, Nikolaev instead of Mykolaiv, and Rovno instead of Rivne. Transliterations based on Russian names became a common practice because of aggressive russification policies of Russian Imperial and later Soviet governments.

In the focus of the campaign, there is also the usage of a definite article the before the name of the country, i.e. "the Ukraine". A definite article is rarely used before the names of independent states but is often used before the names of regions of countries. This norm was established during the Soviet times, when Ukraine was not an independent state yet, and continuing to use a definite article before the country's name is seen by many Ukrainians as questioning Ukrainian sovereignty. This situation came to be particularly acute after the beginning of the Russian military intervention into Ukraine. On the other hand, there are opinions that this campaign is nothing more than populism and was started to make it look like something is being done and to distract attention from more important problems.

Results

After the campaign began, the name Kyiv instead of Kiev began to be used by BBC, The Guardian, Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Economist, The Daily Telegraph, The New York Times and other foreign media. Also, the new name was adopted by some international organizations.

In June 2019, at the request of the United States Department of State, Embassy of Ukraine to the United States and Ukrainian organizations in America, the name Kyiv was officially adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names as the only correct one, which resulted in that the new name began being used by the Federal government of the United States. Before that, both names were used.

One of the objectives of the campaign was to convince international airports around the world to switch from Kiev to Kyiv. Previously, most airports refused to do so, saying that in lists of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) the name Kiev was specified. However, in October 2019 the IATA, following the decision of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, switched to Kyiv.

Since the moment of the campaign's launch, 63 airports and 3 airlines worldwide (as of January 2020) began using the name Kyiv, even before this new name was adopted by IATA. Among them are Toronto Pearson, Luton, Manchester, Frankfurt and Josep Tarradellas Barcelona–El Prat.

Name of Kiev in German

The problem of the name of Ukrainian capital being transliterated from the Russian variant instead of the Ukrainian is present not only in English but also in a majority of other European languages, e.g. in German, where the variant Kiewcode: deu promoted to code: de is much more widely used than Kyjiwcode: deu promoted to code: de , which is promoted by Ukrainian diplomats and activists. In spite of Kyjiwcode: deu promoted to code: de being recognized by the Duden dictionary as one of two possible variants, the German Federal Foreign Office stated that "for cities, it is recommended to use established German names, if such already existed in 1933". Most of the names of other Ukrainian cities in German (save those being part of Austria-Hungary in the past) are, however, based on the Ukrainian names, as there was no established usage until recently.

See also

• Kiev#Name

External links

• Map of establishments which switched to "Kyiv" in Google Maps
• List of establishments which switched to "Kyiv"
• News about #CorrectUA on Hromadske.TV
• KyivNotKiev page on Facebook
• CorrectUA page on Facebook
• CorrectUA page on Facebook
• Hashtag #KyivNotKiev on Twitter
• Hashtag #KyivNotKiev on Facebook
• Hashtag #CorrectUA on Twitter
• Hashtag #CorrectUA on Facebook