Greetings Cards
The greetings card industry seems to have invented an amazing number of special days to be commemorated. Today, believe it not, is “Middle Name Pride Day”.
Each culture has its own traditions when it comes to naming children. To the nomadic Kyrgyz it was considered important to find a suitable name for a newborn child. A child was usually named after one of their relatives, (usually someone who had already died but who had lived a long life), but sometimes special consideration was given to their particular circumstances:
- If there was a history of infant mortality in the family, then a child might be given a name like Toktogul, (meaning “Stop, slave”), or Toktosun, (meaning “let him stay alive”).
- A name indicating strength might be chosen, for example: Tashturghan, (meaning “Standing stone”), Omurbek, (“full of life”), Tashtanbek, (“Strong as stone”), or Bektemir, (“Strong as iron”).
- Sometimes children were given names as if to fool vengeful demons and evil spirits that the child was not really of any significant importance - for example: Asrankul (“Adopted slave”), Bokbasar (“Stepped on dung”), and Tezekchi (“Dung collector”). Likewise, children were sometimes given names to make them unnoticeable amongst everyday, household, items - for example: Tutkuch (“Potholder”), Tuzbay (“Man-Salt”), Kiyizbay (“Man-Felt”), Itybay (“Man-Dog”).
- The character Beshkempir in the film of the same name, received his name because he was adopted – and was allocated to his adoptive family by a committee of “five grandmothers” (“Besh Kempir“). When he learns of this in his adolescence, and confronts his grandmother about it, she denies it and insists that he is “of her blood” and tells him that he was given the name as a charm: “To protect you from the evil eye.”
- Many of the names are based on things found in nature. For example, a common girl’s name is Aigul (eye-GOOL), a combination of Ai, meaning “moon,” and gul, meaning “flower.”
Family names, or surnames, were not common amongst the Kyrgyz. People were known by the name followed by the father’s name. Men and boys often have a name like Almaz Jyrgal uulu. Uulu is like Mac, Mc, O’, and Ben meaning “son of” so this name reads “Almaz, son of Jyrgal”. For girls the equivalent of uulu is kyzy – for example: Ainura Ustanbek kyzy.
In Russian, following Slavic tradition, everyone has three names:
- a Given name – which, when I grew up, was always referred to as a “Christian” name, (such as Ian)
- a Patronymic – taken from their father’s name … for men it ends in “vich”, (such as Robertovich), and for women in “vna”, (such as Ivanovna)
- a Family name – or “surname”, (such as Claytor)
Sometimes this results in interesting situations like Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin … It is very rare for someone to be addressed just by their given name, (only close friends and family use just the given name), or by the given name and the family name. Although many people now call me Ian Claytor, I still meet locals who can’t call me that and insist on using “Mister Ian” or “Mister Ian Claytor”, (or worse still “Sir Ian” – I haven’t yet been knighted, nor am I ever likely to be!). The polite form of address is to use the given name followed by the patronymic, so Vladimir Putin would be referred to or addressed as Vladimir Vladimirovich and, because my father’s name was Robert, I would be Ian Robertovich.
In some Arab countries, a person may be given two middle names: that of their father and their grandfather.
In the west, the use of middle names seems to go back quite a long time. There are different traditions in French, German, Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries.
It’s possible that a middle name was chosen to honour some relative or friend, (it may be that they have some characteristic which the parents hope the child will inherit or develop).
As an aside: I mentioned last week that it was the birthday of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, and that it was a few days after his 29th birthday that he uttered the sentence that was to go down in history as the first to be transmitted by telephone: “”Mr. Watson, Come here, I want to see you”. (That was on March 10th,1875: that is, today’s the anniversary of that historic call.) I also mentioned that, at birth, he was originally given the name Alexander Bell, and that he only assumed the middle name, Graham, on his tenth birthday, named after a family friend.
Sometimes people take their mother’s maiden name as a middle name. In other cases people adopt or use an initial. In the case of US President Harry S. Truman, the middle name, “S”, was chosen to honour his two grandparents, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young. In some cases the middle name is used to distinguish two people who have the same first and family names, (for example, President George Bush and his son, President George W. Bush).
Here, I am getting used to using patronymics: Roza Isakonova, Almazbek Sharshenovich and so forth. Oddly enough, however, this week’s news reports haven’t been as littered as usual with patronymics.
There were quite a lot of cards sold this week … Thursday, March 8th, was International Women’s Day, (a public holiday here), and the florists and confectioners also did a roaring trade. I see that RIA, (the former President Roza Isakonova Otunbaeva), has been named as one of the world’s most influential women by Newsweek and that AShA, (the current President, Almazbek Sharshenovich Atambaev), has decided to establish Mother’s Day as another special day. I am not sure if he proposes that it simply be a commemorative day, or another public holiday, but I presume it won’t be a holiday as it is proposed to hold it on the second Sunday in May, and public holidays are always moved if they fall on a Sunday. What’s more, May, (like March), already has three public holidays, (the 1st, 5th and 9th; May Day, Constitution Day and Victory Day).
Thursday was also my birthday and I have to thank everyone who sent me congratulations, either in person, (those here in Bishkek), by email, writing on my Facebook page, on Twitter or even telephoning me from the States!
As it happens, the sun shone and it was quite warm. It almost felt like Spring after all the snow and cold weather we have been experiencing. The next day, however, as evening approached there were strong winds and today is both cold and overcast and it’s trying to rain as I sit and type this.
As well as cards, flowers, cake and chocolates, on Thursday there were quite a lot of toasts given … to our prekrasnaye zhenshiniy, (beautiful ladies), and to me as the “birthday boy”. It’s a tradition here that any new major purchase has to be acknowledged by a toast; a new apartment, a new car, even a new mobile phone.
Soon, however, the purchase of a new mobile phone will require more than just a toast. The authorities are now one step closer to introducing a law that will require all mobile phones to be registered – you’ll have to present a passport when you buy it. The idea is that it will help to prevent thefts of mobile phones because it will be harder to dispose of them, although I am not entirely convinced of this. There also seems to be a theory that it will make it easier for the security services, (who already have the capability to listen in to phone calls), to know who is saying what to whom.
I wonder if there are greetings cards for Election Day.
Sunday wasn’t only the day of the Russian elections; there were local elections in Kyrgyzstan. In Osh there were reports of crowds of “athletic looking” young people around polling stations but that didn’t erupt into any major violations and Osh was the only place where there wasn’t much controversy over the results. The somewhat controversial Mayor of Osh, Melis Myrzakmatov, (who has been criticized for doing little to prevent last year’s deadly clashes between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities in the city and has faced claims of connections to the previous regime along with attempts from those in government to remove him), was up for re-election. There were eight parties and seven hundred and six candidates in the twenty electoral districts in the city. Shortly before the election there was a rally in support of him which called for the government to resign before next Thursday. There weren’t really any reliable opinion polls so it was hard to predict the result. As it happens, Myrzakmatov’s National Party, Uluttar Birimdigi. took something like 47% of the vote, which means he will be reappointed more or less automatically.
In Karakol and Tokmok, however, things didn’t go so smoothly.
In Tokmok, it was said that only the Republican Party was happy with the results … they won.
In Karakol, a group of dissatisfied voters attempted to support the mayor’s office and two police officers were injured in the fracas. One of the crucial issues seems to have the quality of the voter lists, which seems to be a perennial problem here, but there were other “old” problems such as multiple voting, (despite the marking of voter’s fingers to prevent this – it seems that some people were able to wash off the supposedly “indelible” marks quite easily), unclear actions performed by officials, (such as giving out ballot papers to people who didn’t have identity papers) and party observers evicing independent observers from polling stations. There were even proposals to reintroduce citizen’s patrols to maintain order after the voting.
Some recounts have been ordered but these look like being fairly limited and will affect just a few polling stations.
The embarrassment of the week seems to have been the disappearance of the former president’s brother who was supposed to be serving time for organizing the disturbances last year. He left the colony, (prison), for a hospital appointment and never returned – a month ago, although it has only just come to light. There are all sorts of accusations that this was with the connivance of people in the authorities and although I suppose it is a possibility, I haven’t seen any convincing evidence of this. The authorities seem convinced that he has already left the country and there have been reports of him joining his brother in Belorussia.
Mind you, there have been other interesting moments … like the release of tax declarations of certain high ranking officials. It seems that the Prime Minister doesn’t own a house in Kyrgyzstan, or at least he didn’t declare one. The president seems to have a modest house, (worth USD100,00) and two cars.
What could be an embarrassing moment for AShA is contained in the remarks that the Central Asian and Caucuses states deserve “reparations” from Russia, (The Russian Federation being the “legal successor of the USSR”), and the international community for damage done to water resources during the Soviet period. The huge “megaprojects” for irrigation have created special problems which reflect mismanagement rather than a shortage of supply and are the source of many regional problems and ethnic tensions. What struck me in the reports was the comparison drawn between the ancient irrigation projects of the Mongols and others, in Central Asia, (which he described as “the first and most serious, technologically sophisticated irrigation systems in the world”), with those implemented by the Soviet Union, (which he described as “among the most primitive in the world”).
Although, apparently they have coughed up their fifteen million dollars for the rent for the airbase at Kant and the other military installations in the country, I am not sure how happy the Russians might be if they were faced by demands for reparations. If the report had come from a local scholar then one might have wondered if AShA was trying to distance himself from his Russian allies, (especially after his comments to journalists in, and in his return from, Moscow last week), but the fact is that it came from an American scholar, from the John Hopkins University,
Many greeting cards feature pictures of cuddly animals – especially cats and dogs. Cats are, of course, my favourites although the cards are never as attractive as my five. Unfortunately, however, it’s been reported that in Bishkek alone over two dogs stray dogs have been shot since the beginning of the year. The problem of stray dogs has been with us for some time. In some places they are considered a threat to the livestock, although that is hard to imagine here in Bishkek. There are often stories, however, about violent and threatening dogs which make life difficult for the residents. The authorities claim that there are something like thirty thousand strays roaming the city streets, (which is only a small part of the hundred thousand or so “homeless animals” but I am not sure what they included in that statistic – cats, OK, but seventy thousand? ; rats ?, what else ?) I have to say that there are quite a lot of stray dogs and they do tend to go around in a crowd … a pack … and they make quite an amusing sight with dogs of different sizes, ages and breeds running side by side. Although they may make a lot of noise, (barking), I don’t think I have ever felt threatened by them … it seems to me more like bravado and they turn and run away quite quickly; they seem more sacred than we humans are. The authorities admit that they don’t like adopting this course of action, for one thing it’s expensive – costing over three million som a year – and they are looking at alternatives such as sterilization, (although that costs about half as much again and leaves the animals on the street), and building special kennels, (but I suspect that in most cases, as with most dog pounds around the world, this will just delay the evil moment).
Postcard from Bishkek: the weekly postcard that I send out as an email also gets posted on the website ianbek.kg each week – and there are other postcards which don’t get sent out. This week, for example, there were postcards about:
- Choices, Choices … The Search For A “Single Voice” – a personal look at why there are so many different associations representing tourism in Kyrgyzstan
- Textiles – Bishkek is currently hosting a trade fair about textiles and it seemed an approipriate moment to look at this sector of the economy
- Herbs – Kyrgyzstan has a wide variety of herbs which have culinary, medicinal and other uses
- Dungans In Kyrgyzstan – currently there’s a photo exhibition in one of the city’s museums about the history of the Dungans in Kyrgyzstan and it seemed an appropriate moment to look at the history
- A Present For Mama On International Womens’ Day – rather than flowers and chocolates, Maxim decided to record a Video as a present for Mum
- Vino – about wine in Kyrgyzstan
It is now possible to follow me on Facebook, (where I have specific pages for Celestial Mountains and ianbek … and also links.kg and Kyrgyz Diary), and on twitter, (@Bishkekpostcard and @celestialMTC ).
If you decide that you don’t want to receive these weekly postcards in your email anymore, please drop me a line to and I will take you off the distribution list. Alternatively, if you know someone who might be interested in being added to the mailing list, then get them to drop me a line and I’ll be happy to do so.
Bishkek