Short answers, pulled from the story.
The traditional explanation, from the Primary Chronicle, is that Kyiv takes its name from Kyi, the eldest of three brothers said to have founded the city. The Old East Slavic phrase scholars connect to the name translates as "Kyi's castle." Linguist Jaroslav Rudnyckyj offered a competing interpretation linking the name to a Proto-Slavic root meaning "stick" or "pole," which would make the original meaning "palisaded settlement."
Kiev is the traditional English rendering, derived from the Russian form of the name. After the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014, Ukraine launched the KyivNotKiev campaign to push international media toward the Ukrainian-language spelling. Kyiv is now the official romanized Ukrainian name used in legislative and official acts.
On the 29th and the 30th of September 1941, the Wehrmacht, SS, Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, and local collaborators massacred nearly 34,000 Kyivan Jews at Babi Yar. In the months that followed, thousands more were taken to the same site and shot. The total number of people murdered at Babi Yar during World War II is estimated at more than 100,000, the majority of them civilians.
Kyiv became the capital of Soviet Ukraine in 1934, when the capital was moved from Kharkiv. Following the Declaration of Independence on the 24th of August 1991, Kyiv continued as the capital of the newly independent Ukrainian state.
As of January 2022, Kyiv had a population of 2,952,301, making it the seventh-most populous city in Europe. The 2001 census recorded 2,611,327 residents, with Ukrainians comprising 82.2 percent of the population and Russians comprising 13.1 percent.
Kyiv's two UNESCO World Heritage Sites are St. Sophia Cathedral and the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, also known as the Monastery of the Caves. In September 2023, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee placed both sites on the List of World Heritage in Danger, citing the threat posed by the ongoing war in Ukraine.