I have a Kazakh character who needs a last name, but I can't find any information on how Kazakh surnames work. Anyone here know enough to list some? Here's a little bit of information about said character; -She is the daughter of two well-known scientists who were raised in the middle class (parents date of birth: 1883-1884) -She was born outside of Kazakhstan -The story takes place in the 1920s and she was born in 1909
An old friend of mine married a Kazakh woman whose last name was Barmak. That's about all I know, though. Oh, and do not mention Borat to her if you value your life. Consider yourself warned.
Kazakhstan has about 100 ethnic groups from Slavs to Islamic, and various faiths. Islam, though, is the most populous religion there. Your characters last name could be anything from an Arabic last name to a Polish or Jewish last name. In that time period, Kazakhstan (and the other -stans) were a part of the Soviet Union or in the process of breaking up, so there wasnt a define "country" until its independence in 1990 (someone please correct me if i'm wrong). so you could even have a Russian name. I'd google the ethnic demographics of former Soviet Union, pick the most populous group and base the name off of that group.
Interesting to see Kim at #1 in that list. I knew there were a lot of Korean-descended folks in Central Asia but still.
I work with a lot of people from Kazakhstan and there's two groups I noticed: those with Slavic names (For women, ending in -va or -ya Eg. Yermekeva), and those with more traditional-sounding names (Eg. Kedryuk). I can often imagine the slavic names stripped of the maternal marker as traditional names. Eg, Yermekeva sounds slavic, but Yerma or Yermek sounds traditional.
