linguistic:translation, linguistic:paraphrasing, quality:correction
Etymology

During its long history, Tashkent has undergone various changes in names and political and religious affiliations. Abu Rayhan Biruni wrote that the city's name Tashkent comes from the turkic tash and persian kent, literally translated as "Stone City" or "City of Stones".

Ilya Gershevitch (1974:55, 72) (apud Livshits, 2007:179) traces the city's old name Chach back to Old Iranian * čāiča- "area of water, lake" (cf. Čaēčista, the Aral Sea 's name in the Avesta) (whence Middle Chinese transcription * źiäk > standard Chinese Shí with Chinese character 石 for "stone"), and * Čačkand ~ Čačkanθ was the basis for Turkic adaptation Tashkent, popularly etymologized as "stone city". Livshits proposes that Čač originally designated only the Aral Sea before being used for the Tashkent oasis.

Ünal (2022) critiques Gershevitch's and Livshits's etymology as being "based on too many assumptions". He instead derives the name Čač from Late Proto-Turkic * t iāt (ă) "stone", which he proposes to be seemingly another translation, besides the apparent Chinese translation 石 shí "stone", of * kaŋk- (whence Chinese transcription 康居 EHC * kʰɑŋ-kɨɑ > standard Chinese Kāngjū), which possibly meant "stone". Against Harold Walter Bailey 's and Edwin G. Pulleyblank 's suggested Tocharian origin for * kaŋk-, Ünal proposes that it was instead an Iranian word and compares it to Pashto kā́ṇay "stone".