Who Is Ashot. Why I Took This Name

My name is Shakhruz Shavkatovich Ashirov. Since 2022 I have been known as Ashot — and people often ask me where the name comes from. Many assume it is Armenian. In fact, it is a contraction of my own name: Ashirov Shakhruz — Ashot. Though the Armenian ring to it is no accident — more on that a little further down.

There is more behind this name than a play of letters.

Lord of the Day

I love the name Shakhruz. From Farsi it translates as “Lord of the Day” — and that is a name that obliges. For most of my life I lived up to it and carried its weight: I won olympiads, cultivated a champion's attitude to life, strove to be better than yesterday, learned from the best and competed with everyone.

A Name as a Transformational Ritual

Taking a second name is not a whim. It is a powerful transformational ritual, a practice that allows you to change a person's destiny, their perception of self. That is how the name Ashot allowed me to change the destiny of Shakhruz.

This name was given to me by my beloved woman, my enchantress Farangiz. I accepted it intuitively, with gratitude — and used it as a chance to widen my self-definition: to become “light”, cheerful, human and even “simple” — approachable to everyone, an empathetic and emotionally open person. The way I see our Armenian brothers, who have no equals in warmth of heart, friendship, openness and lightness of being.

My Roots

By Uzbek reckoning I am Uzbek: my father is a Tashkent Uzbek. And on my mother's side I am Jewish.

My great-grandmother is Helena Rubinstein. Her family — European Jews from Poland — lived in Omsk even before the revolution. The Bolsheviks sent them into exile. My grandmother, Nina Petrovna Simonova, was born already in Kazakhstan — there Helena met a Russian military man, and from him my grandmother was born.

Much has remained in the memory of those who are gone. I cannot recover every detail of this story — but I carry it within me.

What “Ashot” Means to Me

Uzbek by father. Jewish by mother. Russian as a native tongue. Tashkent as home.

When so many bloodlines and cultures come together in you, you have no choice — you are bound to be a citizen of the world. To accept all nationalities, religions and faiths with respect, understanding and love.

That is what the name Ashot means to me: accepting everyone as they are — regardless of faith or nation.

This is not an abstract principle. I live in a city where an Uzbek mahalla sits next to a Russian school, a Korean restaurant and a Jewish cemetery, where five languages sound on a single street. Tashkent has been built this way for centuries — and so am I.

That is why, when I build AI agents and the MILAGPT cooperative, I build them on the same principle: technology must accept and unite people, not divide them.

My name is Ashot. Pleased to meet you.