For some time, activists and commentators in Central Asian countries have wanted to change the names of their countries now ending in “stan” because they see it as the imposition of a Soviet Russian definition of their states and one that leads many outsider to dismissively think about “the stans” as something exotic and filled with conflict.

Now Kazakhstan is on the way to being the first of the five countries in Central Asia to make this change. Its draft constitution set to be approved next month identifies that country not as Kazakhstan but as Kazak ili, “the land of the........

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