Placename Changes on Map of Tajikistan

Tajikistan has undergone many phases on places being renamed. In the Soviet period many Communist and Russian names were introduced for cities (e.g., Leninobod), collective farms (e.g., Path of Lenin, First of May, Kuybyshev, Karl Marx, Kommunism, etc…), and mountains (Kommunizm, Marx, Engels. etc.). In the independence era the government first replaced the Russian and Communist names for cities, towns and villages. Later began a phase of Uzbek/Turkic place names getting Tajik names. Then some boring or “strange“ place names were given more important-sounding names. In 2022 most of the Kyrgyz place names in the Rasht Valley were replaced with new Tajik names.

This previous renaming scheme was always in relation to villages, towns and districts. But in 2023, thousands of changes were announced for lakes, rivers, streams, mountains, mountain ranges, glaciers, passes, springs, shepherd summer camps, gorges, and other general areas in the mountains and rural areas. This included mountains named for Russians, glaciers named for Russians or Russian organizations, names that were Kyrgyz or Old Turkic, names that had been misinterpreted by Russian mapmakers, and for some of the smaller number of Pamiri place names, I’m not sure the reason. I don’t speak any of the multiple Pamiri languages, so I don’t know if the Pamiri place names previously on the map were incorrect according to the local language or not.

If you want to see the names that were changed in summer 2023, you can download the PDF documents below:

• Tajik Document

• Russian Document

After reading through the names, it’s clear that the Tajik government is working from the old GenShtab maps (“Soviet Military Maps“). This introduces some problems, notably that in some places the Soviet maps definitely have incorrect names, but when I visited I found out the actual local names (which, in western Tajikistan were often in line with the Tajik language). In these places the government has introduced a new name to replace the incorrect map name while not checking with locals to find out if there was already a Tajik (or Soghdian) name in use.

Where will these changes appear? On internal government documents if everybody follows the presidential directive. But any map put out by the Tajik government in the last 30 years is at a scale that does not allow for 99% of the name changes to be viewed. These maps just show the major rivers, the largest lakes and a few prominent mountains.

On Open Street Map (OSM) data some of the place name changes have been made. But that’s a few dozen name changes implemented out of thousands. As OSM relies on volunteers, I don’t expect anybody has the time and energy to track down the locations, most of with are on the GenShtab map only, and then change them or add them in OSM.

Basically, these name changes, despite being an official government law, may not be implemented — there is nowhere public to implement them besides OSM, and I can’t imagine any volunteer spending several months full time on this project.

Last updated: 13 November 2023