Kazakhstan’s name: Don’t call me Stan

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

OUTSIDE Central Asia, Kazakhstan is mainly known for its oil wealth, its wide open spaces and the portrayal of its people as hopelessly backward in a satirical film from 2006, “Borat”. The aspiring middle-income country is also often lumped together with its economically less-developed neighbours—Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – and is referred to as one of the “stans” (“stan” means “place of” in Persian and “settlement” in Russian.)

This has long needled the nation´s leadership, which puts itself in a different league from its neighbours. Comparisons to other, volatile “stans”—Afghanistan and Pakistan—also grate. So much so that on February 6th Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s president, suggested that the country’s name be changed to “Kazakh Yeli”, or “Land of the Kazakhs”.

Mr Nazarbayev cited the example of nearby Mongolia. “Foreigners show interest in Mongolia, whose population is just two million people, but its name does not end in ‘stan’,” he said, straining facts as well as logic. Mongolia’s investment volumes have sharply increased over the past decade, but they still do not come close to investment levels in Kazakhstan (population: 17m). The number of tourists who visit Mongolia each year is also only a fraction of the foreigners who travel to Kazakhstan.

Mr Nazarbayev called for a public discussion of his proposal, which obediently ensued in newspapers, on television and on social-media networks. Renaming streets and cities has been a common occurrence since independence in 1991, allowing the authorities to distance themselves from their Soviet and, before that, Russian colonial pasts, and to foster a new national identity. But the idea of renaming the country has touched a nerve. The cost would be high. And the name “Kazakh Yeli” has not met with much approval so far. One popular alternative is “Kazakhiya”, reminiscent of Mongolia or Malaysia. But to some nationalists that sounds a little too much like Rossiya, the Russian name for Russia.

In any case, most Kazakhs have more to worry about than the name of their country: the poor quality of health care, the high cost of education, widespread corruption and the shrinking value of the currency. Finding a solution to those issues might be a better way to burnish the country’s image.

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