SOM: COIN OF KYRGYZSTAN
5 som, 2008: Kyrgyz Republic
5 COM: 5 som.
Kookor — Kyrgyz leather bottle for kumis (fermented dairy product traditionally made from mare milk or donkey milk; the drink remains important to the peoples of the Central Asian steppes, of Turkic and Mongol origin: Kazakhs, Bashkirs, Kalmyks, Kyrgyz, Mongols, and Yakuts).
КЫРГЫЗ РЕСПУБИКАСЫ: Kyrgyz Republic.
Emblem of Kyrgyzstan (coat of arms): the bird Ak Shumkar as a symbol of purity and nobleness of thoughts is sung in legends and folk epos. The sun rises above the Kyrgyz land with Issyk-Kul lake and the snowy peaks of the Ala-Too mountains (Tian Shan).
Kazakhstan Mint (Oskemen, Kazakhstan).
- Nickel plated steel: 23 mm - 4.22 g
- Reference price: 0.7$
COIN SOM — WHERE & WHEN (coins catalog: by names & emitents)
- KYRGYZ REPUBLIC (1995-...): som = 100 tyiyn
SOM as coin name.
Som — national currency and coin of the Central Asian state of the Kyrgyz Republic. Consists of 100 tyiyn.
The Kyrgyz som was introduced in 1993 instead of the USSR ruble, which, by the way, residents of Soviet Kyrgyzstan unofficially also called som.
The first coins of this name date from 1995 — jubilee silver 10 som and gold 100 som, dedicated to the thousand-year anniversary of the Kyrgyz Epic of Manas (according to Krause's catalog: "Millennium of Manas").
The som circulation coin was presented for the first time only in 2008 — 15 years after the introduction of the currency.
The etymology of the names of the Kyrgyz currency som and the Uzbek monetary unit soʻm is similar: translated from many Turkic languages (Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Kazakh...) the word means "pure" — in the sense of the purity of the metal in the coin. In ancient times, this was the name given to high-quality gold coins, coins made of high-purity gold.
