It is part of the wider CorrectUA campaign, which intends to internationally assert a
Ukrainian identity and remove linguistic relics of the
Russian Empire and
Soviet Union by promoting the exclusive use of Ukrainian-language transliterations for Ukrainian place names.[3][4][5]
CorrectUA campaign
The CorrectUA campaign lobbies for changes to Ukrainian city names whose English names are derived from their Russian spellings. Examples of Russian and Ukrainian spelling differences include: Odessa and Odesa, Kharkov and Kharkiv, Lvov and Lviv, Nikolaev and Mykolaiv, and Rovno and Rivne.[6]
The campaign also advises against using the definite article "
the" before the name of the country, i.e. "the Ukraine". The definite article is rarely found before the names of independent states, most stemming from the name either being a compound of a noun and an adjective or from a geographical region. For Ukraine, the addition of "the" is hypothesized to either derive from its time as the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (compare with 'the Russian Federation') or due to the "Ukraine" being derived from "borderland", and "the Ukraine" meaning "the borderlands" (compare with '
The Netherlands').[7] Many Ukrainians regard the use of "the Ukraine" as questioning Ukrainian sovereignty, especially after the beginning of the
Russian military occupation of parts of Ukraine beginning in 2014.[citation needed]
Critics argue that the campaign is
populistic and was started to divert attention from more important problems.[8][4]
In English, Kiev was used in print as early as 1804 in
John Cary's "New map of Europe, from the latest authorities" which appeared in Cary's New Universal Atlas published in London, as well as in Mary Holderness's travelogue New Russia: Journey from Riga to the Crimea by way of Kiev, published in 1823.[9] The Oxford English Dictionary included Kiev in a quotation by 1883, and Kyiv in 2018.[10] Transliterations based on Russian names became common practice because of aggressive
Russification policies from the
Russian Imperial and later
Soviet governments.[11][better source needed]
The transliteration Kyiv was legally mandated by the Ukrainian government in 1995.[12] The transliteration was approved by the Tenth United Nations Conference on Standardization of Geographical Names in 2012, but did not catch on internationally.[13][14] Prior to 2019, there were few cases of organizations switching to the "Kyiv" spelling.[4][15][11] After the
Russo-Ukrainian War began in 2014, some Western media outlets opted to switch spellings.[16]
Origin of the KyivNotKiev campaign
The "KyivNotKiev" campaign began with a
fortnight-long "marathon". Every one or two days, the MFA published the title of foreign news outlets; on social media, Ukrainians would ask them to use Kyiv instead of Kiev. Ukrainian social media users also added "#KyivNotKiev" frames to their avatars. According to the MFA, ten of the most influential English-language global news outlets were affected:
Reuters,
CNN,
BBC News, Al Jazeera, Daily Mail, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and
Euronews. Among the top Ukrainian officials who took part were: Minister of Healthcare,
Ulana Suprun; Representative of Ukraine at the
Council of Europe,
Dmytro Kuleba; and the Member of the Verkhovna Rada,
Yehor Soboliev. Thousands of Ukrainians participated, and the hashtag "#KyivNotKiev" was seen by more than 10 million social media users.[17] During or shortly after the marathon, the
BBC and The Guardian started using Kyiv. Later, the campaign shifted its attention to foreign airports, which used Kiev almost exclusively.[citation needed]
On 2 March 2022, the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs in South Korea announced that they would switch the Korean translation of Kyiv from the Russian-derived 키예프Kiyepeu to the Ukrainian-derived 키이우Kiiu. This had been requested by the Embassy of Ukraine in Korea the previous day.[28]
On 31 March 2022, the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan announced that they would switch the Japanese translation of Kyiv from the Russian-derived キエフKiefu to the Ukrainian-derived キーウKīu.[29][30][31] This had been requested by the Embassy of Ukraine in Japan in 2019.[32]
Taiwan, which uses Traditional Chinese, began using Ukrainian-derived transliterations from 24 March 2022. For example,
National Academy for Educational Research updated its preferred transliteration to
Kharkiv哈爾基夫Hāěrjīfū on 24 March,[33]Luhansk盧漢斯克Lúhànsīkè on 14 April,[34] and
Zaporizhzhia札波利扎Zhábōlìzhā on 10 June.[35] Both Kyiv and Kiev are transliterated as 基輔 Jīfǔ.[36]
Similarly, United Nations switched to Ukrainian-derived transliterations in its official Simplified Chinese version. For example, when condemning the recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, it used Russian-derived 卢甘斯克Lúgānsīkè on 25 February 2022[37] but Ukrainian-derived 卢汉斯克Lúhànsīkè on 2 March.[38] When condemning the annexations on 30 September and 12 October, both used Ukrainian-derived 扎波里日亚Zhābōlǐrìyà for Zaphorizhzhia and 卢汉斯克Lúhànsīkè for Luhansk.[39][40]
Effective 24 February 2024, two years after the full-scale invasion, Germany officially changed their spelling of the Ukrainian capital from Kiew to Kyjiw.[41][42] This change had been requested by Ukrainian organizations in Germany in March 2022.[43]
Some Portuguese-language media also use Kyiv rather than Kiev, despite the latter still being the formal name of the city in Portuguese.[44][45]
^Holderness, Mary (1823). Journey from Riga to the Crimea, with some account of the manners and customs of the colonists of new Russia. London: Sherwood, Jones and co. p. 316.
LCCN04024846.
OCLC5073195.
^"I, n.1". OED Online. Oxford University Press. September 2019.
Archived from the original on 17 September 2020. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 2017 Thai News Service (Nexis) 21 Apr. Kyiv filed a lawsuit against Russia at the ICJ for intervening militarily.