Hey,

This is interesting topic. Many international names (and words in general) in 
Estonian do have obvious etymological route via our big neighbour's language. 
More well known to me is the case of Georgia (the country) what we normally 
call Gruusia (for centuries I believe), but some years ago some were 
questioning whether the name has some bad associations for the georgians, and 
suggested to have new name "Jürimaa". Which is totally weird, strange and it 
never gained any wider popularity, so we gave up. I suspect also English name 
"Georgia" would have similar issue.

Very similar sample to the Kiiev case: 
https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/29787492 
<https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/29787492> - I see now that there are a lot 
of "Tallin" variations, which is clearly from Russian and therefore wrong.  
Some people complain about this too, but I would not teach others how to write 
in their language, that's totally up to them.

In Estonian there are no 'official' ways to write or transliterate foreign 
names, for person names there is probably some more official transliteration 
rule (as sometimes you need to translate Arabic names etc), but not for 
placenames.

Estonian Language Institute has database which is often used as useful 
guideline, even if it is not legally binding. For Ukrainian capital there is 
one main form, and many parallel ones: 
https://www.eki.ee/cgi-bin/mkn8.cgi?form=mm&lang=et&kohanimi=96062986&f2v=Y&f3v=Y&nimeliik=&maakond=&vald=&kihelkond=&asum=&f10v=Y&f14v=Y&of=tb
 
<https://www.eki.ee/cgi-bin/mkn8.cgi?form=mm&lang=et&kohanimi=96062986&f2v=Y&f3v=Y&nimeliik=&maakond=&vald=&kihelkond=&asum=&f10v=Y&f14v=Y&of=tb>

However, we have also general trend to move from "Estonian-like" placename 
writings to more similar to original (and sometimes to international/english) 
ones. So  before 1940 we wrote Kalifornia and Kostariika, now we have always 
California and Costa Rica. Similar thing has happened with our neighbour 
Latvian names - people say Salacgriva, not Salatsi etc. 

My personal opinion is that if we have more or less firm consensus what is 
Estonian version of a placename, then I'd stick to that, regardless from where 
it is coming from. Maybe one day we would start writing for example Kõjiv or 
Kõjev to be more close to Ukrainian origin, but first our language tradition 
should change, and then we'll fix it on the map, not vice versa. 

Jaak

p.s. I think you'd need to subscribe to the list to be able to post and read 
answers


> On 12 Dec 2018, at 11:20, Bondar-Skowronski Bohdan <[email protected]> 
> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> середа, 12 грудня 2018 р. 11:17:48 UTC+2 користувач Bondar-Skowronski Bohdan 
> написав:
> 
> I want to ask Estonians for permission in name: et new translations.
> As a Ukrainian, I critically perceive when in the 21st century they continue 
> to use Russian names instead of Ukrainian ones.
> For example, the capital of Ukraine Kyiv
> There are two versions of the translation in the Estonian Wikipedia.
> Old to which Estonians are accustomed - Kiiev
> and the new version of Kõjiv
> Kõjivis the real name of the city 
> Kiiev is a Russian name coined in Moscow and moved to world cartography.
> Since now Ukraine is completely independent of Russia and on the basis of the 
> rules on ground it is necessary to use the Ukrainian name Kõjiv/
> Russian name Kiiev to write as an alternative.
> When a foreigner arrives in Kyiv, he will see more than 99 percent of Kyiv 
> and will mostly hear Ukrainian.
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