language


Kyiv or Kiev?

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine (not “the Ukraine”) dominating the news, many of us have noticed for the first time that most reports now call its capital Kyiv rather than Kiev. I wondered when this shift happened and why, and exactly how the name should be pronounced.

Ukraine flagKiev comes from the Russian name for the city, Kyiv from its Ukrainian name. Both Russian and Ukrainian use the Cyrillic alphabet, so any version of the name in the Roman alphabet is a transliteration. With the current situation, using “Kyiv” is especially satisfying, since it rejects Russia’s claim to the nation. (So far, thankfully, I haven’t seen any claims that criticizing Russia is “red scare racist.”) We can safely say it’s the new standard spelling. For similar reasons, we now talk about “Ukraine” rather than “the Ukraine.” The latter suggests a region rather than a nation. A few other countries have a definite article in front of their names, but they’re ones where the name is a phrase (e.g., “the Netherlands,” “the United States”).
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Language shifts: “Social engineering”

This was going to be an article on how writers on computer security misuse the term “social engineering.” However, my research quickly showed that the tech usage has almost completely displaced the original meaning. When that happens, it’s useless to say it’s wrong.

An example of the original usage can be found on encyclopedia.com under “Large Scale Social Engineering”:
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