As I mapped Turkmenistan a couple of years ago, I noted that two locations were marked as the town of Darganata. Only one could be correct, and in my explorations I determined which one was Darganata, then pursued the correct name of the other, which turned out to be a village named Çarwadar. I made the correction, but filed away a question in the back of my mind: why would a mapper insert such an obvious error in OSM?

The answer came to light yesterday as I examined a Soviet military map of the area. In Soviet times, Çarwadar was a state farm named Sovkhoz Dargan-Ata, or in Russian совхоз “Дарган-Ата”(the contraction “sovkhoz” means “state farm”). Not a town, not even a village in Soviet terms, but a state farm community named in honor of its big brother a few kilometers away. Mystery solved! Today Çarwadar is a full fledged village, not just a farm community, and enjoys its own name, which means “herdsman”. The old state farm focused on sheep raising, and presumably the residents of Çarwadar still do.