Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 28 – More than 19,000
residents of Tajikistan have de-Russianized their names so far this year,
dropping the “–ov” or “–ev” endings that had been de rigueur in Soviet times,
according to Rustom Shohmurod, that Central Asian country’s minister of justice
(news.tj/ru/news/v-tadzhikistane-s-nachala-goda-smenili-svoi-rusifitsirovannye-familii-svyshe-19-tys-chelovek).
The current effort to restore Tajik spellings
began following the publication of an article in “Jumhuriyat” by Sherhon
Salimzoda, the procurator of the republic, who complained that many Tajik
citizens were still using or had restored the Russian versions of their names
and families because of problems they had experienced while working in the Russian
Federation.
He said that Tajiks should be proud of
their national names and spelling and that there was no reason for them to make
changes. His article at least initially
led Tajik officials to restore their national names. The new report this week
suggests that campaign is now spreading to the population at large.
And following Salimzoda’s article, Gavhar Sharofzoda, the
head of the Tajik State Committee on Language and Terminology, declared that “avoiding
Russian suffixes in family names is ‘the national responsibility of each
citizen of Tajikistan.’”
Tajikistan’s
president Emomali Rahmon dropped the “-ov” from his name in 2007. His decision
to do so led other Tajiks to follow at that time. But, as the Asia Plus news
agency points out in its current report, “after a certain time, [Tajiks] began
returning from Russia and were again using their former [Soviet or Russian-style]
family names.”
It seems unlikely that there will be
a similar reversal this time. More than that, the very massiveness of this
return to national rather than Russianized names may serve as an example not
only across Central Asia but inside the Russian Federation as well.
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