KYRGYZSTAN

Kyrgyzstan; Kyrgyz: Кыргызстан, Russian: Кыргызстан), officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a country in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous, it is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and People's Republic of China to the east. The ethnonym "Kyrgyz", after which the country is named, is thought to originally mean "forty tribes", presumably referring to the epic hero Manas who, as legend has it, unified forty tribes against the Khitans. The 40-ray sun on the flag of Kyrgyzstan symbolizes the forty tribes of Manas.