(English) Ukraine’s capital city isn’t Kiev, it’s Kyiv: Learn why that matters so much #KyivNotKiev
Recently, I’ve started working for an important media holding based in the Ukrainian capital. Part of my activities consist in proofreading texts after another author finishes it, both in English and in Portuguese. I’m supposed to mark down what I consider to be a mistake, without directly correcting it; it’s a very dynamic group process, which is helping me to learn a lot — including about the subject referred on the title.
Naively, during one of those proofreads, I’ve marked the word “Kyiv” as a mistyped word; my basic school geography classes assured me that the Ukraine’s capital city is adapted to “Kiev”, therefore I’ve figured that “Kyiv” is a mistake from the Cyrillic alphabet derivation. After a quick Googling, the primary sources confirmed the idea. This simply notation unleashed a rather impressive sequence of events: Important people corrected and highlighted me: “If you don’t know the correct form, don’t mark as incorrect”.
I was shocked with such a reaction; sounded even unfair. After all, Google and Wikipedia agreed with me; I couldn’t understand the reason for all the reprimand. So I’ve decided to further investigate the matter, and, for my absolute surprise, this is a subject of MUCH importance and rather not discussed, specially here in Brazil. It’s about culture, it’s about a nation that fought a lot and, correctly, demands respect.
Ukraine is a country that became independent after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Being a country of important agricultural lands, it was always a “piece of desire” to Russia; even today there are fighting and conflicts, both armed and politics, related to the border region. Putin worsened the mood when invaded the country, trying to establish and control Ukrainian lands; however, the relations between the two countries are not good in a long time, very much because of some “Russification” of the culture and the Ukrainian people, who are not happy with it — after all, they’re an independent and autonomous country.
Parts of this so-called “Russification” is present in the alphabet. In most parts very similar to the Russian lexicon, the Ukrainian language per se also has many similarities to the one spoken in the largest country in the World. However, they’re not the same language, having specific rules and using the characters differently. But for the rest of the world (just like in Brazil we supposedly speak Spanish) Ukrainian and Russian are the same. With all the historic between the two countries, that generalization is offensive to Ukrainian culture itself; it’s like thinking that Brazil and South America are the same. For the average Brazilian, that doesn’t matter, since we’re the largest and most economically powerful country of the continent. But for the other South American countries it’s offensive and disrespectful, because it neglects their (major!) importance in a cultural context.
And then, “Kiev” is the RUSSIAN derivative for the Ukraine’s capital city. Since 1995, the Ukrainian authorities changed the way it’s written in our alphabet to “Kyiv”, which is similar to the used in the country. Even though the rest of the world, in a first glance, did not understand the importance of that change, from 2019 and on the #KyivNotKiev movement was on the streets and on the hearts of the Ukrainian people. It’s not simply a matter of translation: “Kiev” comes from a language that’s not Ukrainian, so it’s fundamentally incorrect. To compare that change to a simple translation is a mistake, since it’s a linguistic adaptation from a term that’s simply different. Adopting the Russian term means to ignore Ukraine’s autonomy and acting indifferent to the rules and the culture of Ukraine.
In Ukrainian, the capital’s name is Київ, which is literally translated to Kyiv. In Russian, however, they use Киев —which after the adaptation of the Cyrillic alphabet, becomes Kiev.
The protests were effective: In the United States, Kyiv is the official term to refer to the Ukrainian capital since recently. The EN-US Wikipedia was already corrected as well. Here in Brazil this debate doesn’t even exist, maybe because we have that tendency to believe it doesn’t make any difference, because we can’t foresee the cultural symbolism in one simple word.
To accept a cultural dominance for so long has a huge downside for a country and the people on it. This tiny manifestation of freedom and independence represents, in a practical sense, everything that those two concepts mean: The message is to unleash from the shackles of taboos, disrespect and oppression. And that’s why I think this matter is much more relevant than changing a name: It’s about contesting the status quo, and, effectively, validating the cultural value of an important country. By the way, we could learn from them. —
