Talk:Astana

General

Changes made - Astana airport code hasn't been updated, (TSE) and still refers to one of the older names for this city. The taxi cost to/from the airport is more like $15 from my experience (1750-2500 tenge) Last time I visited, the Baiterek Tower was supposed to be 97 metres tall, deliberately chosen as 1997 was an important year re. Almaty losing out to Astana in being Kazakhstan's capital. Also of note within the tower is the collection of signatures from leaders of most major world religions, in line with the Pres.'s wishes to be an enabler of cross-religion discussions. Atameken Map of Kazakhstan - during the summer months at least, there are normally English speaking guides available (optional obviously), should you wish to learn a little about the models, and there is a covered section which focuses on the city of Astana itself. Taking photos sometimes requires an extra payment to be made - you may want to keep cameras in your bag until you pass out of sight of the front ticket office. Also added info in the Buy, Eat and Drink sections.

Changes NOT made - Think the tag for the photo ( http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Image:Astana.jpg ) may need double checking. I live over here, and don't know the Russian/Kazakh name for that area, but unless it directly translates as 'main square', it is a little misleading. There are probably a couple of contenders for the the title of main square in Astana, such as the one opposite Congress Hall.

Chris Merriman ( personal@chrismerriman.com ) 07/02/08

Thanks for the notes, but please plunge forward and amend them directly -- it's not "someone else's info", it's your and everybody else's page as well! (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:28, 7 February 2008 (EST)

I've amended the page directly now, thanks. Left notes above to show what was changed. Have NOT amended the photo's tag, as I don't know for certain what that area is actually called. Feel use any other interesting info found in the Kazakhstan 101 section of my blog (see domain name of my e-mail address, not adding a proper hyperlink as I don't want to be seen as advertising/directly soliciting visits). Chris Merriman ( personal@chrismerriman.com ) 07/02/08

I did change the photo caption. I agree that main square would make most people think of Congress Hall. That's the Left Bank in the photo, Ministry of Transport. (WT-en) KZBlog 00:46, 5 August 2010 (EDT)

Expo 2017 here

[1]. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 11:50, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

New name

This page must be renamed to Nursultan --Omondi (talk) 16:51, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

I'd say let's at least wait until Wikipedia has moved their page. ϒψιλον (talk) 17:23, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Also, the rule for naming on this site is which name is most used in English. That said, this is a pretty new city in the first place, so whatever the heck they want to call it will probably be adopted in English in short order. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:46, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

We definitely don't move articles because of an "official" change. We're not here to promote any government's agenda. But it is hard to know when the common use changes. In this case, I think we would do well by following Wikipedia's lead. They have a larger community watching these things, and that would be a good indicator of when to change. Ground Zero (talk) 12:12, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

They have not changed the name of their article, at least not yet. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:24, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

I remember reading somewhere (probably on Wikipedia) that they're naming it after the former president — you know, the one who stayed in office for 27 years or something... --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:01, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes, go to Nursultan Nazarbayev#Capital renaming for information. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:03, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

By the way, if you go to w:Astana and you look at the side bar, notice how many times the city's been renamed. That's amazing. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:05, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

I wonder if someone somewhere has made a list of the cities in the world that have been renamed the most times. Is there a Guinness World Record for "Most renamed city"? —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:17, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

w:Astana#Etymology even explains it... doesn't sound too obscure, tbh :) -- andree.sk(talk) 05:41, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

• As I wrote on the main text, in the Kazakh language, "astana" means "capital city", and renaming it to Nursultan has always been the plan. The only possible question was, when would it happen. Some people speculated it would happen only after his death. It didn't take too long after all. Ibaman (talk) 14:19, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Let's do it...

The wikipedia article is now renamed too, also mentions on openstreetmap, google maps etc. ... I'd say it's time .-) -- andree.sk(talk) 06:43, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Is it the most used name for the city in English now? Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:04, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Probably, wikipedians agreed that it is... On the quick look, airlines, news, maps etc. mention Nur-Sultan. The historical name (and as said above, it literally means "capital city") should be left in the articles and regions somewhere (still - it's 160M (Astan) vs 48M (Nur-Sultan) hits on google), but I reckon the new name is here to stay and there's no point keeping WV out of date. Our friends at WT are ahead already in this regard :-) -- andree.sk(talk) 10:01, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

OK, I have no objection. But let's get some more discussion before we act. Would you like to add this discussion to requests for comment? Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:21, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

I think we should go ahead now. And I think it's time we reconsider our policy on naming. In a case like this where is is reasonable to expect that common use is just a matter of time, waiting doesn't seem to make sense. (I'm not endorsing following official diktat, but we seem to spend more time than necessary resisting the inevitable.) Ground Zero (talk) 18:27, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Support renaming, and agree the policy could be amended to account for many places' not having a common English name. I think the policy is good in stopping somebody renaming Moscow to Moskva, but for cities like this one which are mostly ignored by ordinary English speakers, we could more-or-less follow the official name. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 00:09, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

We haven't waited a long time, probably very few readers would care greatly, and I don't think the policy should be changed. Meanwhile, it looks to me like we have a sufficient consensus to rename, though we could wait another 24 hours to see if anyone has an objection. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:16, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

It probably doesn't make sense to put this to rfc (it's not a too crucial topic), we can simply wait (even a week) and then rename... -- andree.sk(talk) 05:52, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Since there's no disagreement, I think we can make the change tomorrow. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:02, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Done. I also changed what seemed essential to change, but I'll bet more of the place names within the city have changed, so please check the text for more places to fill in the new name of the city. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:29, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be better to use the offical name "Nur-Sultan", and only use Nursultan as redirect? -- andree.sk(talk) 12:11, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

I think you just volunteered to move the article again, fix the double-redirect, and respell the name in the article. Next time, instead of posting a subthread of "Let's do it" in a thread that starts with "This page must be renamed to Nursultan", start a new thread and make it very clear you are proposing a different spelling. Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:02, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Sorry :) I already did it that way - before it got reverted - so somehow I overlooked that here the discussion started with Nursultan... I'll fix it, no problem. -- andree.sk(talk) 13:28, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek: - unfortunately I cannot, the page already exists etc. Please move it, I'll handle the fallout. -- andree.sk(talk) 19:21, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Or maybe not

I just had an edit changing all references of Astana in the "Understand" section to Nur-Sultan, believing this name should have been fairly established in daily usage by now. Then I decided to check the Wikipedia article for the stories behind the historical names, and saw that the Kazakhs decided to rename the city back to Astana just yesterday! What are we going to do? Vidimian (talk) 16:20, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Probably change it back. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:36, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:10, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

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• Astana 2010.jpg

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Currency

Prices for most hotels are given in USD. Do they take dollars? Don't they take tenge? Nothing is said about the usefulness of dollars in Kazakhstan#Buy. If international chains prefer dollars and have a good or even sensible exchange rate, I think one should write about it there. Or are the prices added by somebody who just converted the price to dollars (or looked at their credit card balance)? –LPfi (talk) 06:58, 19 September 2022 (UTC)