Ex-Soviet Tajikistan on Friday imposed a legal ban on giving new-born babies surnames with Russian-style endings, in line with a government drive towards a more traditional national identity. Tajiks began Russifying their surnames while under Soviet rule and this grew into a mass phenomenon in the post-war years. But the long-serving president of the impoverished Central Asian country, Emomali Rakhmon, has discouraged this in recent years in a drive to boost patriotism. He also ended the use of Russian as an official language in 2009, although the Tajik language is still written in an adapted form of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.
Tajikistan passed the new law in March and officials began applying it immediately when drawing up birth certificates although it only entered force Friday.