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time.tzname is initialized from C tzname variable or tm_zone around Jan, Jul of the current year.
If time.mktime() is called with a time tuple from the past/future then after the call time.tzname might be out-of-sync with the corresponding C tzname and tm_zone values. Because C mktime may change tzname, tm_zone values on some systems and time.mktime calls C mktime.
I've attached test_mktime_changes_tzname.c file that demonstrates that mktime() may change tzname.

I've attached test-timezone-info-is-updated.diff file -- a patch for Lib/test/test_time.py that demonstrates that time functions fail to update the timezone info.
The test uses Europe/Moscow timezone but most timezones around the world had/will have different tzname/utc offset (unrelated to DST changes) in the past/future.

One of the ways to fix this issue is to synchronize time.tzname 
attribute with the corresponding C tzname variable.
I've uploaded sync-time-timezone-attr-with-c.diff patch that
synchronizes tzname, timezone, altzone, daylight attributes.
The patch also includes tests. No docs changes are necessary.
The code follows C, POSIX standards and the time module documentation.
Any differences are unintetional.
The patch also fixes "wrong time.timezone" issue
http://bugs.python.org/issue22799
The patch doesn't use tm_gmtoff, tm_zone C values from jan, jul to set 
timezone, tzname time module attributes therefore it may break
software that relies on that behaviour. I would be interested to hear
about such instances.
I've removed the cygwin branch in the code (I haven't found cygwin 
buildbot). It could be added back as is if necessary.

C mktime itself should not change timezone globals, but it may indirectly if it calls tzset() and TZ changed between calls.
I don't understand what this issue is about. Unlike C mktime, time.mktime is not documented to call time.tzset(). If you want to change time.tzname - you need to call time.tzset() after changing TZ.

> C mktime itself should not change timezone globals, but it may indirectly if it calls tzset() and TZ changed between calls.
You should have run the attached test_mktime_changes_tzname.c which demonstrates that (at least on some systems) C mktime *does* change tzname global even if TZ envvar is constant in the test.
Nowhere in my bug report I had mentioned different TZ values. I did mentioned *past* *future* dates -- the same timezone may have different utc offset, timezone abbreviations at different times. These timezone globals can change even if TZ is constant.

> You should have run the attached test_mktime_changes_tzname.c ...
I did run it and tried several times to understand what it does. It did not help.
If you claim that calling mktime() changes the value of the global tzname variable, you should be able to demonstrate it in five lines of code:
extern char **tzname;
tzset();
printf("%s %s\n", tzname[0], tzname[1]);
mktime(&tt);
printf("%s %s\n", tzname[0], tzname[1]);
(plus a few lines to initialize tt)
If the code above prints two different lines - file a bug report with your C library vendor.

The C code produces correct values according to the tz database.
If TZ=Europe/Moscow then
tzname={"MSK", "MSD"} at 2010年07月01日 and
tzname={"MSK", "MSK"} at 2015年07月01日. Notice the difference!
The code calls C mktime() with corresponding time tuples
and checks that *tzname* is equal to the expected values. That's all.
If C code is incomprehensible; here's its Python analog:
 >>> import os
 >>> os.environ['TZ'] = 'Europe/Moscow'
 >>> import time
 >>> time.tzset()
 >>> time.mktime((2010,7,1,0,0,0,-1,-1,-1))
 1277928000.0
 >>> time.tzname #XXX expected ('MSK', 'MSD')
 ('MSK', 'MSK')
 >>> time.mktime((2015,7,1,0,0,0,-1,-1,-1))
 1435698000.0
 >>> time.tzname
 ('MSK', 'MSK')
C tzname changes on my machine after the corresponding C mktime() calls 
but Python time.tzname does not change after the time.mktime() calls.

> C tzname changes on my machine after the corresponding C mktime() calls 
Did you run the code that I posted? If not - please do and report the results.
(I think there is a valid issue behind all this, but you are not helping to reveal it. I suspect we can do better by just relying on system tzset() and not have the try June and January work-around. That's why I added Antoine to the "nosy" as the developer who last touched this code.)

mktime() does change several global C runtime variables on Linux. See the man page on http://linux.die.net/man/3/mktime
However, the Python documentation does not mention anything about having time.tzname being tied to the C lib global: https://docs.python.org/3.5/library/time.html#time.tzname
So I don't think this qualifies as bug.
Note that those global C variable are not thread-safe, so you can't really trust their values relating to anything you've just set using mktime() anyway.

BTW: The most portable way to access the timezone name of a given local time is to use strftime() with %Z as format character.

Akira,
Would issue22798.diff patch address your issue?

Is there any platform where mktime resets global tzname but does not provide tm_zone? If not, OP's issue is largely theoretical, but I still like MAL's suggestion of using strftime("%Z") as a fall-back.

> Would issue22798.diff patch address your issue?
No. The issue is that C mktime() may update C tzname on some platforms
but time.mktime() does not update time.tzname on these platforms while 
the time module docs suggest that it might be expected e.g.:
 Most of the functions defined in this module call platform C library
 functions with the same name. It may sometimes be helpful to consult
 the platform documentation, because the semantics of these functions 
 varies among platforms.
---
Unrelated: time.strftime('%Z') and
time.strftime('%Z', time.localtime(time.time())) can differ on some 
platforms and python versions
 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32353015/python-time-strftime-z-is-always-zero-instead-of-timezone-offset 

On 29.09.2015 11:31, Akira Li wrote:
> 
> Akira Li added the comment:
> 
>> Would issue22798.diff patch address your issue?
> 
> No. The issue is that C mktime() may update C tzname on some platforms
> but time.mktime() does not update time.tzname on these platforms while 
> the time module docs suggest that it might be expected e.g.:
> 
> Most of the functions defined in this module call platform C library
> functions with the same name. It may sometimes be helpful to consult
> the platform documentation, because the semantics of these functions 
> varies among platforms.
tzname is set when the module is being loaded and not updated
afterwards (unless you call tzset()). I can't really see why you
would expect a module global in Python to follow the semantics
of a C global, unless this is explicitly documented.
Note: The fact that tzset() does update the module globals is
not documented.
> ---
> 
> Unrelated: time.strftime('%Z') and
> time.strftime('%Z', time.localtime(time.time())) can differ on some 
> platforms and python versions
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32353015/python-time-strftime-z-is-always-zero-instead-of-timezone-offset
The StackOverflow discussion targets %z (lower case z),
not %Z (with capital Z).
I think this is just a documentation bug.
Overall, I think that relying on those module globals is
not a good idea. They are not threadsafe and their values
can only be trusted right after module import. It's much
safer to access the resp. values by using struct_time values
or strftime().

Marc-Andre Lemburg <report@bugs.python.org> writes:
...
> tzname is set when the module is being loaded and not updated
> afterwards (unless you call tzset()). I can't really see why you
> would expect a module global in Python to follow the semantics
> of a C global, unless this is explicitly documented.
Python docs recommend reading platform docs.
Platform docs say that mktime() may change tzname.
Python docs do not contradict.
Why wouldn't I assume that mktime() may change tzname?
> Note: The fact that tzset() does update the module globals is
> not documented.
It is documented e.g., I see: "These will be propagated into
time.tzname" in tzset() docs.
Though tzset() has nothing to do with the issue (TZ envvar hasn't been
changed).
>> Unrelated: time.strftime('%Z') and
>> time.strftime('%Z', time.localtime(time.time())) can differ on some 
>> platforms and python versions
>> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32353015/python-time-strftime-z-is-always-zero-instead-of-timezone-offset
>
> The StackOverflow discussion targets %z (lower case z),
> not %Z (with capital Z).
Look at the answers. The examples clearly shows both %Z and %z.
> I think this is just a documentation bug.
>
> Overall, I think that relying on those module globals is
> not a good idea. They are not threadsafe and their values
> can only be trusted right after module import. It's much
> safer to access the resp. values by using struct_time values
> or strftime().
>
Agree. Moreover, you can't trust them even "right after module import"
sometimes.
Though, some predictability in the behavior such as "time.tzname is
whatever C tzname is -- consult the platform docs" would be nice.

MAL> The fact that tzset() does update the module globals is
not documented.
See #28130.

I ran the attached test-mktime.c program on Linux and MacOS X with the following results (TZ=America/New_York):
$ cat test-mktime.c
#include <time.h>
#include <stdio.h>
static void
print_globals(struct tm *tm)
{
 printf("%04d-%02d: %s/%s (%s) %d %ld (%ld)\n",
 	 1900 + tm->tm_year, 1 + tm->tm_mon,
 	 tzname[0], tzname[1], tm->tm_zone?tm->tm_zone:"NULL",
 	 daylight, timezone, -tm->tm_gmtoff);
}
int main() {
 struct tm tm = {0, 0, 0, 1, 0, -100};
 print_globals(&tm);
 tzset();
 print_globals(&tm);
 mktime(&tm);
 print_globals(&tm);
 tm.tm_year = 43;
 mktime(&tm);
 print_globals(&tm);
 tm.tm_year = 45;
 tm.tm_mon = 8;
 mktime(&tm);
 print_globals(&tm);
}
Linux:
$ gcc test-mktime.c && ./a.out
1800-01: GMT/GMT (NULL) 0 0 (0)
1800-01: EST/EDT (NULL) 1 18000 (0)
1800-01: LMT/EDT (LMT) 1 18000 (17762)
1943-01: EST/EWT (EWT) 1 18000 (14400)
1945-09: EST/EPT (EPT) 1 18000 (14400)
MacOS X:
$ clang test-mktime.c && ./a.out
1800-01: WILDABBR/WILDABBR (NULL) 0 0 (0)
1800-01: EST/EDT (NULL) 1 18000 (0)
1800-01: EST/EDT (NULL) 1 18000 (0)
1943-01: EST/EWT (EWT) 1 18000 (14400)
1945-09: EST/EPT (EPT) 1 18000 (14400)
Indeed, mktime changes tzname as a side effect, but the result is system dependent (see LMT/EDT vs. EST/EDT in the third line).
Furthermore, the values of daylight and timezone variables do not get updated, resulting in an inconsistent state. For this reason, I don't think Python should expose the new values of tzname. People who really need access to those can use ctypes.