Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev doesn't like the name Kazakhstan. At the same time, foreigners take an interest in Mongolia, the population of which makes up only two million, but its name does not end in '-stan,'" he told onlookers while visiting a school in Atyrau, according to his official website.
This isn't Nazarbayev's first foray into nomenclature. The president, a septuagenarian autocrat who has led Kazakhstan since the Soviet Union's dissolution in , has built up quite a cult of personality after years of one-party rule. In , he moved the nation's capital from Almaty, the country's largest city, to Akmola, a small town deep in the Kazakh steppe, and renamed it Astanaβliterally "capital" in Kazakh. The generic name is suspected to be a placeholder for Nursultan, his own name, but Nazarbayev has graciously delayed naming the city after him until he dies.
Renaming an entire country is an even bolder move by Nazarbayev, but it isn't uncommon worldwide. Rhodesia was originally named for the British man who colonized it, but became Zimbabwe when white-minority rule ended in the s. The military junta in Burma renamed the country Myanmar in after seizing power, although many opposition groups, foreign governments, and media outlets do not recognize the name change.
And Nazarbayev does have a point about his country's name. The suffix comes from the Persian root istan , or "land"βhence the "land of the Uzbeks," "land of the Kazakhs," and so forth. Pakistan bucks the trend somewhat: Its name means "land of the pure. This isn't a Central Asian quirk. English and other Germanic languages frequently use "-land" in a similar manner.
The name "England", for example, means "land of the Angles," the Anglo-Saxon tribe that populated the early medieval British Isles. Germany's name in German is " Deutschland. There's even the U. The difference for Kazakhstan and its neighbors is the cultural and geopolitical context. There's a certain stigma associated with the suffix "-stan.
