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# Suyunchi
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/article-2221jsp/
- Published: 2004-11-11T00:11:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-17T11:52:31.000Z
- Author: Anora Mahmudova
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 19:17, #ImagesUploaded

![suyunchi.jpg](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/80/3f804bea-4b2d-4ddf-9ff0-6ec7d0afa5fa/content/images/2026/04/suyunchi_2DKKK0Q-1776425899019.jpg)

suyunchi.jpg

In the Uzbek [language](http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/profiles/profu02.htm?ref=opendemocracy.net), spoken in the central Asian republic of Uzbekistan itself as well as parts of its neighbouring countries Afghanistan and Tajikistan, the word *suyunchi* (also spelled *sevinchi*) connotes a very particular type of gift or present. The word – whose root meaning in [Uzbek](http://www.omniglot.com/writing/uzbek.htm?ref=opendemocracy.net) is “joy” – describes the gift a person offers or receives on the occasion of good news.

Its most common usage is related to the birth of a child, where the bearer of good news rushes to the relatives and solicits *suyunchi* in return. In most cases, any present will be symbolic, but the more ostentatious or merely grateful recipients will give cash or other expensive items. In a male-dominated society like [Uzbekistan](http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/cia03/uzbekistan%5Fsm03.gif?ref=opendemocracy.net), the value of *suyunchi* may increase with the arrival in the family of a baby boy.

The essence of the *suyunchi* is that the messenger has to deliver the news in person. In cases involving births, anxious grandparents would often wait anxiously, their gifts ready.

My family used to live close to a maternity hospital, so we were often the first to deliver the news from the delivery ward to our many aunts and cousins. My own mother was a frequent messenger, and *suyunchi*\-getter.

Around eight years ago, I was living in a university dormitory. Because personal letters were given to a *concierge* who would distribute them at her whim, individual students were often entrusted with letters to hand to others. One day, a fellow-student brandished a letter I had been expecting from a scholarship programme I had applied to. She did not know what the letter was about, but the fact that someone in America bothered sending an Uzbek student a letter was already good news.

After seeing the letter and understanding that my application had been successful, I could not contain my happiness. I took whatever money I had in my pocket and rewarded my good messenger. At that moment it felt like I was exchanging the little money I had for a big change in my life, so it was totally worth it and it seemed a natural thing to do.

This is *suyunchi*.

The resilience of the custom may partly be due to the fact that good news is often scarce in modern [Uzbekistan](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=1826). For example, although Uzbekistan has a national health-care system, in practice patients have to pay the doctors who deliver their babies on the spot. In pre-1991 days, when Uzbekistan was part of the [Soviet Union](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%5FSocialist%5FRepublics?ref=opendemocracy.net), this resembled more of a tip – like the cigars fathers traditionally offer in some western countries.

Nowadays, the doctor or midwife who delivers the baby demands a much more substantial reward, and the payment is often called *suyunchi* rather than a professional doctor’s fee. Needless to say, the value of *suyunchi* is higher where a caesarian section is performed – not everyone’s idea of good news!

Every tradition is capable of subversion. Many Uzbeks of my generation or older recall a late 1970s film called *Suyunchi*: that rare thing, a feelgood Soviet classic. The main character is a goofy unemployed man who lives with his mother, his wife, and ten children – all boys. The comic storyline highlights and gently satirises traditional Uzbek values and contemporary social issues. At the end of the movie, the wife gives birth – at last, to a girl. Her youngest son runs around their village, screaming at the top of his lungs: *Suyunchi! Suyunchi!*