Any armed conflict is also played out in terms of vocabulary. The war in Ukraine is no exception to the rule and places France in a delicate situation. Our country indeed continues to name the capital of the country kyiv, in Russian style, and not Kyiv, in Ukrainian style, as Volodymyr Zelensky would nevertheless like.
The position of the Ukrainians is quite easy to understand. “The Russian form, kyiv, results from the former colonial status of Ukraine, which was dominated for centuries by the Empire of the tsars and then by the USSR, recalls linguist Iryna Dmytrychyn, lecturer at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (Inalco), where she is responsible for Ukrainian studies. Ukraine now wants to reclaim its toponymy, as do all countries emerging from an era of colonial domination. Ukrainians in favor of Kyiv is therefore legitimate. Otherwise, it amounts to saying to them: ‘Your culture is not worthy of consideration, unlike Russian culture.'” To those who notice that the French say London and not London without the British taking offense, she replies: “Certainly, but the United Kingdom is not threatened in its existence by France.”
Anglo-Saxon countries say Kyiv
The situation is all the more sensitive since Vladimir Putin himself has exploited the linguistic question. Officially, it was in fact to save the threatened Russian-speaking minority that he intervened in Crimea and Donbass. Therefore, the Ukrainians find it hard to accept seeing us designate the capital of their country in the language of their aggressor.. “How would you have reacted if, under the Occupation, some had started calling France?Frankreich’ ?” asks a user on social networks.
The new name, Kyiv, was adopted by Ukraine in 1995, just a few years after independence in 1991. In 2012, it was officially recognized by the UN – which has a rule to rely on to the sovereign authorities in the matter. Many countries have done the same, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world – including the major media, from the BBC to CNN via the New York Times. To amplify these initial successes, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs even launched, in 2018, a vast campaign on this theme with the hashtag #KyivNoKiev. France, however, still refuses to follow this movement.
“We speak French and not Ukrainian”
It is because our country follows a completely different logic, as summed up by Pierre Jaillard, the president of the National Commission for Toponymy, one of whose missions is to “standardize French toponymy relating to foreign places”. “In France, we speak French and not Ukrainian, he explains. I with Anne of kyiv, in 1051!”
In his eyes, this tradition is enough to close the debate. “The right of peoples to self-determination also applies to the French, who have the right to speak French in France”, he continues. According to him, the rule should even extend to secondary cities like Lvov/Lviv and Kharkov/Kharkiv. His committee barely consents to seeing the Ukrainian form added between parentheses, after the French form: kyiv (Kyïv). “This is, of course, a purely toponymic position, further specifies Pierre Jaillard, which obviously does not imply approval of Russian aggression.”
The tricolor approach concerning “exonyms” (the names of places used in French to designate foreign toponyms) was formalized by a decree of November 4, 1993 “relating to the terminology of the names of States and capitals”. In essence: France only accepts a new name if the domination changes radically: this is how Upper Volta became Burkina Faso or, before that, how Constantinople became Istanbul.
On the other hand, it refuses to adopt the simple local forms of the same name. This is why we continue to use Antananarivo and Belarus and not Antananarivo and Belarus. “In total, some 1,500 toponyms have thus been francized, specifies Pierre Jaillard. Numerically, it is only a minority, taking into account the millions of toponyms that exist throughout the world, but politically, they are the most important, because they concern countries and big cities.”
We Frenchified London, but not Manchester
However, all of our exonyms are far from forming a coherent whole. Without anyone knowing exactly why, we have Frenchified London (London), Munich (München) and Barcelona (Barcelona), but not Manchester, Berlin or Madrid, although they are located in the same countries. It does not matter, however, in the eyes of Pierre Jaillard, who points out that in all cases, usage prevails.
However, this position is not unanimous. On the one hand because the use sometimes changes over time – otherwise, Paris would still be called Lugdunum. Then and above all because our country has not always followed this rule. Between the 1950s and the 1980s, there was indeed a long period when we showed ourselves to be more accommodating by renaming Guyana, for example, the former British Guiana – due, no doubt, to remorse linked to our colonial past. It was not until the 1990s that the trend was reversed, under pressure from academic and administrative circles.
However, it remains to be understood why, on this subject, France is more reluctant than the United Kingdom. “This is mainly due to our centralizing tradition, explains Pierre Jaillard. In the United Kingdom, English has simply been superimposed on languages like Welsh and Gaelic without trying to make them disappear. Nothing like this in our country where, Since the Revolution, French has always fought against regional languages.” In fact, in our country, the status of Provençal, Alsatian and Basque is roughly comparable to that of Ukrainian at the time of the Russian Empire…
As far as France is concerned, the National Commission for Toponymy has nevertheless set a relatively tolerant rule, which can be summarized as follows: French is required for the names of administrative districts – “region”, “department”, ” common”, etc. -, as well as for the generic part of the arteries: “street”, “avenue”, “boulevard”, etc. ; for the rest, the regional languages regain citizenship (it is the case to say). Nothing prohibits, for example, from baptizing an artery in Languedoc rue du brand (market street). A way, according to her, to reconcile article 2 of the Constitution – “The language of the Republic is French” – and its article 75 – “The regional languages belong to the heritage of France”.
Nevertheless: these recommendations were considered too lax by the Ministry of the Interior, where people have always been wary of French linguistic diversity. He also lobbied for the possibility of using regional languages in toponymy not to be mentioned in the “Practical guide for elected officials” written on this subject. His fear? That this official document does not give “bad ideas” to Corsicans, Basques and others. No question that Ile-Rousse, for example, becomes Lisula and Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Donibane Lohizune. Because behind the language, there is the culture, the identity, the feeling of belonging to a group. And that, at the Ministry of the Interior, we do not really appreciate. It is therefore also for internal reasons that Paris prefers to continue to say kyiv and not Kyiv.
(1) In the French Parisian press, thee daily Release now uses “Kyiv”. L’Express has decided, for its part, to remain faithful to the usual usage and maintains “kyiv”.