Uzbekistan
Updated: Sep 10, 2022
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Country Name
Uzbekistan, and officially the Republic of Uzbekistan.
Location
Uzbekistan is a country in Central Asia. It is surrounded by five landlocked countries: Kazakhstan to the north; Kyrgyzstan to the northeast; Tajikistan to the southeast; Afghanistan to the south and Turkmenistan to the southwest.
Capital
Tashkent.
Reason for Naming the country
The name “Uzbekistan” means "Home of the Free".
It is taken from a combination of uz which means in Turkic "self", bek "master"("bey in modern Turkish"), and -stan (in Persian means "land of").
The word Uzbek itself remains disputed. One view holds that it is named after Oghuz Khagan, also known as Oghuz Beg, which became the word Uzbek.
Another theory states that the name means independent or the lord himself, from Öz (self) and the Turkic title Bek/Bey/Beg.
A third theory holds that the variant Uz, of the word Uğuz, earlier Oğuz, united with the word Bek to form Uğuz-bek > Uz-bek, meaning "leader of an Oguz".