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The war in Ukraine has brought to the attention of journalists and communicators an issue that had been a concern for Kiev for several years: the spelling of proper names. People and localities alike are better known by their Russian names. Ukraine insists that the spelling should be in Ukrainian. Some publications and chancelleries have adopted Ukrainian spelling, especially after Russia started the war. Others have decided to stick to the old spelling, as it has always been in their own languages; a third category uses the two spellings alternately or even simultaneously, like, for instance, Kiev/Kyiv. The issue may seem ridiculous; however, it is related to the manifestation of Ukraine's national identity and reflects another confrontation with Russia, this time in the field of linguistics.
De-russification of names – a geopolitical step for Ukraine
In 2018, Ukraine launched the “KyivNotKiev” campaign, which is part of a larger action called “CorrectUA”. The initiative calls for changing the names used in foreign languages not only for Kiev, but also for other Ukrainian cities whose names are derived from Russian.
On October 2, 2018, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine addressed the world with the request to no longer use the toponym Kiev, but the correct one, which is Kyiv. The MFA also called for the use of the toponyms Lviv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Rivne, Ternopil, etc., not Lvov, Kharkov, Nikolaev, Rovno or Ternopol, stressing that the traditional names used in the European languages were borrowed from Russian.
To that end, the MFA published a list of “archaic” and “correct” names, arguing that transliterations based on Russian names remained common practice due to the “aggressive Russification policies carried out by the Russian or Soviet imperial authorities.”
Ukraine's initiative has not been very successful: the names of cities have been changed at airports or railway stations, but the international press has continued to use those ingrained in the European languages or has only partially adopted the requests made by the Ukrainian diplomats.
In Romania there is no standardization of spelling, so different spellings of city names or even politicians are used. Some write, for example, the president Volodymyr Zelenskyy (as on the official website), and others – Volodimir Zelenski, because it is a transcription more adapted to the phonetics of the Romanian language. No decision has been taken at the political level either - sources from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bucharest, whose website uses the Russian spelling, told Veridica that this is a matter of habit and also of writing according to the Romanian spelling, and there is no substrate or hidden agenda, as nobody has even considered conveying a certain message or positioning Romania in a certain way with regard to this matter.
Ukrainian geopolitics and Romanian language
The late philologist, journalist and translator Mircea Lutic, from northern Bukovina, who translated works by Russian writers such as Feodor Dostoevsky or contemporary Ukrainian writers, was known in the Romanian press for his stand on accepting the adaptation of the Romanian language to new political or linguistic realities.
Mircea Lutic would argue that the Romanian language had never interacted with the academic Ukrainian language, which is why many names were not represented correctly. In his work as a journalist, as Mircea Lutic was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Zorile Bucovinei” in Chernivtsi (Cernăuți) for a long time, he would try to use the Ukrainian names in the Romanian journalistic language long before the Ukrainian MFA made the requests mentioned earlier.
Besides the toponym issue, there is also the matter of proper names. Step by step, the Romanian press got used to using the classic Ukrainian names, without presenting them in Russian style: Volodymyr, not Vladimir, Oleskii, not Alexei, etc.
What about the names ingrained into the Romanian language?
Geopolitical arguments aside, the Romanian language works according to written and unwritten rules. Adapting it to requests from other countries can be quite complicated.
The philologist Gina Puică, PhD lecturer at the “Ștefan cel Mare” University of Suceava, who for a time coordinated a Romanian language lectureship on the territory of Ukraine, says that “to continue to use the toponym Kiev in Romanian instead of the transliterated Ukrainian Kyiv should not induce any sense of guilt in Romanian users, nor should it arouse any anger on the part of our Ukrainian friends”.
The specialist considers that besides being the Russian name of the capital of Ukraine, Kiev is the Romanian name of the same capital, consecrated by tradition, just like Varșovia is the Romanian name of the Polish capital Warsaw, or Budapesta the Romanian name of the Hungarian capital Budapest. Also, in Romanian we say Cernauți (for Chernivtsi), Liov (for Lviv), Slatina (for Solotvino), as we traditionally say Seghedin (for the Hungarian city of Szeged) or Marsilia (for the French Marseille) and Florenta (for Firenze).
“On the other hand, I myself, who worked in Cernauți as a Romanian lecturer between 2015 and 2021, have in recent years chosen to use Kyiv instead of Kiev in discussions (in Romanian) with Ukrainians and in the texts I have written/edited. Also out of respect for the Ukrainians’ choices, I have always used the Latin transliteration used by them (close to the English language) for proper names, breaking the tradition of transliterating the Slavic names into Romanian”, Gina Puică says.
Language usage has its own rules, which often do not even take into account the rules of the Academy. “However, I can't help but notice that the ideology of the present time, attentive to the others’ right to be different and nourished by the emotional arousal of the individuals connected through social networks, encourages the break away from tradition and the creation of small linguistic revolutions”, Gina Puică also says.
Can a compromise solution be found?
Broadly speaking, some of Ukraine's MFA requests can be accepted in the case of lesser-known names, such as the city of Obukhiv, whose Russian name is Obuhov - however few know where this city is and it is not an ingrained name.
But the discussions appear in the case of some traditional toponyms, used for hundreds of years in journalistic or academic practice. We can recall here a series of Russian names of Romanian cities, present in the Ukrainian language (Iasî, Buharest and not Iași or București), whose change in Romanian style would mean a series of unnatural changes for the phonetics of the Ukrainian language.
Those who use the names of Ukrainian cities, as requested by the Ukrainian MFA, do so on the basis of a sense of political solidarity with Ukraine, and less for philological reasons. So, if you say/write Donbass, Harkov, Odessa or Kiev you respect the “Explanatory Dictionary of the Romanian Language”, and if you say Donbas, Kharkiv, Odesa or Kyiv you are in solidarity with the Ukrainian people fighting against the aggression of the Russian Federation.
It remains to be seen whether there will be a re-positioning at academic level that takes into account the more recent political realities.
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