The Kyrgyz som

Why Kyrgyzstan left the rouble

The break-up of the Soviet Union changed nothing in the money at first. The Central Bank of Russia took over the Soviet State Bank, Gosbank, on 1 January 1992 and kept shipping Soviet notes and coins to the central banks of the fourteen other new states, which had been Gosbank's branches in the republics. Kyrgyzstan's National Bank had been created by legislation in June 1991 from those Kyrgyz operations.

Through the first half of 1992 fifteen states shared the rouble. Each issued credit on its own account, some printed coupons to shield their markets, and in July 1992 the Russian central bank restricted the flow of credit between Russia and the rest. Kyrgyzstan issued the som on 10 May 1993. Its first notes were known as the banknotes of the transitional period. Russia's own exchange of banknotes at the end of July 1993 finished the rouble zone off.

Who issues the som and on what law

The National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic has sole authority to issue the country's banknotes and coins. Its status and powers are set by the Constitution and by the law on the National Bank, and its stated objective is price stability. The notes are printed in France and the United Kingdom; the coins are minted in Kazakhstan, at Ust-Kamenogorsk.

What som and tyiyn first meant

The National Bank traces som to a Turkic word for a roughly worked piece of metal or wood, later applied to rough ingots of precious metal used in exchange. Wikipedia gives a different reading, that som means pure in Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Uzbek and Uyghur, implying pure silver or gold. Soum was also the name of the Soviet rouble in Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik and Uzbek, printed on the back of Soviet notes among the fifteen languages of the union.

Tyiyn comes from the grey squirrel, tyiyn chychkan, whose skin the bank says the Kyrgyz once used as a means of exchange before money as such. The word stayed on as the name of small change.

How the notes changed from series to series

The first issue of 1993 put the tyiyn on paper, with government notes of 1, 10 and 50 tyiyn beside notes of 1, 5 and 20 som. A second series followed in 1994, known as the banknotes of the stabilisation period and better protected against forgery. A third began in 1997. The fourth, from 2009, brought a 5,000 som note. The 500 som of the third series carries Sayakbay Karalaev beside images from the Manas epic.

The bank marked the currency's thirtieth anniversary on 10 May 2023 with a fifth series, released in steps: 200, 500 and 1,000 som that day, 20, 50 and 100 som on 15 February 2024, and 5,000 som on 10 May 2024. Two printers produced the family at once, each making its materials separately to the bank's own designs, and an outside consultant was hired to keep them identical. Figures from Kyrgyz art and culture take the fronts. On the backs each note shows a mountain from the region its portrait subject came from.

The National Bank lists notes of 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1,000, 2,000 and 5,000 som. The 2,000 som began as a commemorative note on 17 November 2017, for twenty-five years of independence, of the National Bank and of the currency, with the equestrian monument to Manas in Bishkek on its front.

When coins replaced the paper tyiyn

Circulation coins came in January 2008: 10 and 50 tyiyn and 1, 3 and 5 som, with a 10 som coin following in 2009. Wikipedia connects them to demand from vendors, from slot machine operators and from anyone collecting fares. Production of the 1 and 5 som notes stopped, and the paper tyiyn, in use until then, gave way. The 1 som coin shows a leather flask, the kookor, marked with the triangle of a tumar. The bank now lists coins of 50 tyiyn and 1, 3, 5 and 10 som.