Thanks to Kurban Bayram, I had a four-day weekend. Thanks to the preparations for the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, central Ashgabat was closed to most traffic for all intents and purposes. So I stayed home and used the nascent gazetteer project to check for typographical errors and other misspellings in the OSM database for Ashgabat. I think I have caught all major typos and other errors.

I also began research into the historical names for the streets in this city, which in some cases have changed several times. To give you an idea of what’s involved, here is the entry for Magtymguly, a major thoroughfare, which is now on its fifth name:

Magtymguly Magtymguly (2033) şaýoly Mervskiy prospekt, Kuropatkinskiy prospekt, prospekt Svobody, prospekt Stalina.

Magtymguly Pyragy (1724-1807) was a Turkmen spiritual leader and philosophical poet who made significant efforts to secure independence and autonomy for his people in the 18th century. He is considered the greatest Turkmen poet, though he wrote in Arabic, Persian, and Chagatai, not in Turkmen. The original name of this street was Mervskiy prospekt as the street led eastward to the city of Merv (modern Mary). It was subsequently changed to Kuropatkinskiy prospekt to honor Russian General Aleksey Kuropatkin (1848-1925), who is credited with the victory over the Teke armies at the Battle of Gökdepe and from 1890 to 1898 was governor of the Transcaspian governate, effectively viceroy of Turkestan. He was Russia’s minister of war from 1898 to 1904, and was blamed for major Russian defeats in the Russo-Japanese War. During the Soviet period the street was named prospekt Svobody (Freedom Prospect) except for a period between 1953 and 1961 when it was renamed in honor of Iosif Stalin.