Like many of you, at the beginning of our journey to surrogacy in Ukraine, we referred to the capital of the country as Kiev, which is the transliteration of the Russian name.
As tome went by, we came to understand that Kyiv is the official name of the capital, corresponding to the Ukrainian spelling.
According to the first Slavic chronicle from 1113, the Ukrainian capital owes its name to its founder, Kyi.
"Kyiv" is the official name that Ukrainians use for their capital, and they pronounce it something like 'kiyif.'
Since speakers of Old East Slavic and later Russian named the city as Kiev, most European countries used the word Kiev because most of the books being translated were in Russian, not Ukrainian.
In 1991, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Ukraine's independence, the Ukrainian government emphasized the use of the Ukrainian language, in contrast to the forced Russification they underwent during the Soviet period.
This is why today Kyiv is confirmed as the name of the capital of Ukraine.
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