Odesa/Odessa: a note on the placename
It has been located within the boundaries of the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. Tatars settled the site, calling it Khadjibey, in the early 15th century and though the area had been inhabited for over a millennium by then, it is a reasonable starting point for Odesan history. Russian speakers have played a large role in the development of the city over the past two centuries, as have speakers of Turkish, Ukrainian, Yiddish, Greek, French, Italian, and a great many other languages.
The language of most documents produced by the imperial government (prior to 1917) is Russian, and this is the case with Pyotr Shesterikov's Flora Odessa. Here at the Imperiia Project our practice is to use the placenames given in the primary sources with which we are working. Because we produce with an English-speaking audience in mind, we make adjustments to transliteration, such as dropping terminal soft signs, in an effort to make unfamiliar placenames less intimidating.
We also make exceptions for placenames that are familiar to the general public. We use "Moscow" instead of "Moskva," "Kyiv" instead of "Kiev." In his Flora, Shesterikov describes a place called "Odessa." Today, that place has become familiar to western audiences as a result of Russia's invasion of, and war against, Ukraine. So while "Odessa" feels true to the source, "Odesa" feels true to our own practice. Not because of politics, but because of the shift in geographical fluency. You will probably note occurrences of both spellings throughout the project and more broadly across the site. Hopefully this note will shed some light on that.
And for the curious, check out the list of alternate names for Odesa given by GeoNames. It's a great starting point for thinking about what it means to name a place.