The Day ‘Kiev’ Became ‘Kyiv,’ and How Ukraine’s Place Names Get Their Spelling

On March 31, 2022, Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced a “change in the names used for Ukraine’s capital and other places.” It changed the name used for the capital from “Kiev,” based on the Russian-language pronunciation, to “Kyiv,” based on the Ukrainian-language pronunciation, and also changed the names used for other Ukrainian places to ones based on Ukrainian pronunciation.

We received suggestions from various quarters that the name used for Ukraine’s capital be changed from a Russian-based one to a Ukrainian-based one. In light of this, we inquired with the Ukrainian government about its views on an appropriate name, and having now received a response from the Ukrainian side, we have decided to change the name used for Ukraine’s capital from “Kiev,” based on the Russian-language pronunciation, to “Kyiv,” based on the Ukrainian-language pronunciation.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “Change in the Names Used for Ukraine’s Capital and Other Places” (ウクライナの首都等の呼称の変更, March 31, 2022)

The same announcement frames this change as one expression of solidarity with Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. The city’s own name did not change. Its Ukrainian name had always been Київ; what changed was how that name is transliterated into Japanese.

One city, three ways to write it

Ukrainian place names appear in at least three forms: the Cyrillic script of Ukrainian, the Latin alphabet (romanization), and Japanese katakana. The table below sets these side by side, together with the spelling this outlet uses and other Japanese spellings you may see elsewhere.

Looking at the right-hand column of the table shows that not all pre-2022 Japanese spellings were based on Russian pronunciation. JETRO’s 2020 report uses the Russian-based Japanese spellings キエフ (Kiev), ハリコフ (Kharkov), and オデッサ (Odessa), while also using the already Ukrainian-based spellings リビウ (Lviv) and ドニプロ (Dnipro).

The Latin-alphabet spelling is set by a Ukrainian government resolution

The rules for transliterating Ukrainian into the Latin alphabet are set out in Resolution No. 55 of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, dated January 27, 2010, “On the Regulation of Transliteration of the Ukrainian Alphabet into Latin Script.” The table attached to the resolution assigns a Latin letter to each Ukrainian letter and lists place names and personal names as examples of its use. Київ becomes Kyiv, Одеса becomes Odesa, Харків becomes Kharkiv, and Донецьк becomes Donetsk. A note to the table states that the soft sign (ь) and the apostrophe are not represented in the Latin alphabet. That is why the ь in Донецьк does not appear in Donetsk.

The same table is also used to transliterate personal names, turning Андрій into Andrii and Володимир into Volodymyr. Naming conventions are covered in Ukrainian Personal Names — Roman-Alphabet Spelling, Patronymics, and Forms of Address.

#KyivNotKiev: the fight over the English name

In English, the spelling Kiev was used for a long time. According to an October 2, 2018 article in the Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s English-language newspaper, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, together with the strategic-communications center StratCom Ukraine, launched a social-media campaign asking international news organizations to write Kyiv instead of Kiev. The campaign was named CorrectUA, and requests were to carry the hashtag #KyivNotKiev.

According to the same article, the Ministry also asked that city names beyond the capital — Kharkiv, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Lviv — be written in forms transliterated from Ukrainian, and asked that the country’s name not be written as “the Ukraine.” The article quotes a Ministry Facebook post as saying: “using Soviet-era place names rooted in Russian is unacceptable to the Ukrainian people.” The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website still has an official guidance page on place-name spelling and usage, under the name “#CorrectUA” (posted December 19, 2019).

Place names that were actually changed

The change from Kiev to Kyiv was a change in how the name is transliterated. Separately from that, Ukraine has also changed some place names themselves by law.

Law No. 317-VIII of April 9, 2015 (“On Condemning the Communist and National Socialist (Nazi) Totalitarian Regimes and Prohibiting Propaganda of Their Symbols”) required place names containing symbols of the communist regime to be changed, and set a six-month deadline for municipalities and other bodies (Article 7, Clause 6). Also, on May 19, 2016, the Verkhovna Rada renamed the city of Dnipropetrovsk (Дніпропетровськ) to Dnipro (Дніпро) by Resolution No. 1375-VIII. Article 85 of the Constitution places the naming and renaming of settlements within the authority of the Verkhovna Rada.

On March 21, 2023, Law No. 3005-IX, “On Condemning and Prohibiting Propaganda of Russian Imperial Policy and Decolonizing Place Names,” was enacted. It prohibits giving place names, municipality names, and the like that glorify or symbolize Russian imperial policy, and sets out procedures for renaming settlements, streets, squares, and so on that carry such names (Article 4). Except for certain provisions, the law took effect three months after its promulgation.

The question of how a name is transliterated and an actual change in the name itself need to be considered separately. Kyiv is an example of the spelling of the same city’s name changing; Dnipro is an example of the city’s actual name changing.

How place names are handled in historical sources

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ “Ukraine Basic Data” page (ウクライナ基礎データ) carries a note about the name change stating that “descriptions dated before March 31, 2022 have not been changed retroactively.” “Kiev” remains in the Ministry’s documents from before March 31, 2022, and those have not been rewritten.

English-language scholarly encyclopedias handle this the same way. The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU, published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta) has a Kyiv entry with the heading “Kyiv [Київ; Kyjiv; Russian: Киев; Kiev],” putting the Russian name and the old English spelling in brackets. The bibliography for the same entry keeps period titles as they were, such as Kiev teper i prezhde, published in Kyiv in 1888. The place of publication is given as Kyiv.

This outlet, too, writes its own running text using current spellings, while keeping book titles, newspaper names, and quotations as they originally appeared. For example, the article on the Ems Ukase writes about a newspaper closed in 1876 as Kievskii Telegraf (the paper’s name in its period Russian-language form). When writing about events before a renaming, we add the fact of the change, as in “Dnipro (Dnipropetrovsk until 2016).”

Japanese katakana spelling is not fixed

While the Latin-alphabet spelling is fixed by the government resolution’s table, there is no equivalent official conversion table for Japanese katakana. Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs set out its policy in its March 31, 2022 announcement, but the announcement itself does not include a list of spellings for individual place names.

Looking at actual Ministry documents: a statement by the Foreign Minister (外務大臣談話) dated September 30, 2022 writes “Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson” (ドネツク、ルハンスク、ザポリッジャ及びヘルソン), while one dated March 19, 2024 writes “Luhansk oblast, Donetsk oblast, Kherson oblast, Zaporizhzhia oblast, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and the special city of Sevastopol” (ルハンスク州、ドネツク州、ヘルソン州、ザポリッジャ州、クリミア自治共和国、セヴァストーポリ特別市). Even where both are based on the same Ukrainian pronunciation, spellings can diverge over how far the sound of the soft sign (ь) is carried into katakana.

Even when the katakana differs between sources, you can tell whether it is the same place name by checking the Ukrainian spelling or the Latin-alphabet spelling under Resolution No. 55. The Ministry’s “Donetsk” corresponds to Донецьк and Donetsk; its “Luhansk” corresponds to Луганськ, which becomes Luhansk when the table’s rules are applied.

This outlet carries the sound of the soft sign (ь) into katakana as well, writing ドネツィク and ルハンシク — which we render in English as Donetsk and Luhansk. Because these differ from the Ministry’s own Japanese spelling, in articles where it matters we note on first use, for example, “ドネツィク (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs writes ドネツク).”