Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev has proposed to rename Kazakhstan to Kazakh Eli to get rid of the ‘stan’ ending and make the name more authentic for the Kazakh culture.
Commenting on the proposed renaming, Director of the Valikhanov Institute of History of Ethnology Khankeldy Abzhanov points out that the word ‘Kazakhstan’ consists of two parts ‘Kazakh’ - the name of the ethnos - and ‘stan’ that means ’country’ in Persian. In the Kazakh language ‘El’ means ‘country’.