Very nice, Borat: Glorious nation of Kazakhstan renames its capital … again
The name of the capital of Kazakhstan looks likely to revert to Astana, after spending three years as Nur-Sultan.
A view of Hazrat Sultan Mosque in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, Monday, Sept. 12, 2022. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has agreed to restore the former name of the country's capital just three years after he renamed it in honor of his predecessor. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
With the approval of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, a law to this effect has been introduced in the parliament of the central Asian country, Russian news agencies reported on Tuesday.
The capital was only renamed Nur-Sultan in 2019, in honour of the former Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Other places or institutions named after Nazarbayev are to be able to keep their names, Tokayev said.
The city of more than one million inhabitants in the northern Kazakh steppe has borne several names since its foundation in 1830.
It was first called Akmolinsk, then Tselinograd during Soviet times.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, independent Kazakhstan named the city Aqmola, which translates as White Tomb.
Nazarbayev moved the capital from the country’s largest city, Almaty, to the city in 1998 and developed it with futuristic buildings along the lines of the Gulf States.
He gave it the neutral name Astana, Kazakh for “capital”.
