Provinces of Uzbekistan in related Turkic and neighbouring languages

One name, many Turkic spellings

The Turkic languages agree on the shape of most names and differ in their letters. Andijon is Əndican in Azerbaijani, Andican in Crimean Tatar and Turkish, Әндіжан in Kazakh and Анжыян in Kyrgyz. Samarqand keeps its q in Uzbek, Azerbaijani and Kazakh but turns into Samarkand in Turkmen and Semerkand in Turkish.

Tashkent shows a regular sound shift. Azerbaijani Daşkənd and Turkmen Daşkent begin with D, while Kazakh Ташкент and Kyrgyz Ташкен keep the T; Persian تاشکند (Tâškand) and Tajik Тошканд end in -and, as Samarkand does.

Three regions are named after rivers, Qashqadaryo, Surxondaryo and Sirdaryo. Azerbaijani writes Qaşqadərya and Turkish Kaşkaderya, and Chinese ends two of them in 河 (hé), Surxondaryo as 蘇爾漢河 (Sū'ěrhànhé) and Sirdaryo as 錫爾河 (Xí'ěrhé), while Qashqadaryo is spelt out syllable by syllable, 卡什卡達里亞.

Why some languages have three columns

Several languages appear in two or three scripts because their speakers live on both sides of a script border. Kazakh and Kyrgyz are written in Cyrillic in Central Asia and in Arabic script by the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz of China; Tajik Cyrillic has a Persian-script counterpart; Uzbek is given in Latin, Cyrillic and the Arabic script it used before the 1920s.

The list covers the 12 regions and Karakalpakstan; the city of Tashkent shares its name with the region. ISO 3166-2:UZ has not changed these units since 2002, so the names still match the first level of the country.