ALMATY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - President Nursultan Nazarbayev may drop the 'stan' from Kazakhstan to distinguish his booming oil-rich nation from the rest of Central Asia, where the other so-called stans are mostly mired in poverty.
The world's ninth largest nation by area with a population of just 17 million, Kazakhstan is the largest economy of the post-Soviet region, which also includes Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.