BORAT’s home nation of Kazakhstan is set to change the spelling of its name for the third time in less than a century in a bid to snub Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

The oil-rich central Asian state will become "Qazaqstan" by abandoning its alphabet based on Russian Cyrillic for its Latin equivalent.

3 Borat's Kazakhstan is to change its name to 'Qazaqstan' in a bid to snub Putin's Russia

The Kazakh foreign ministry said the move is part of the country's modernisation strategy.

It said: “[Latin] is used by approximately 70 per cent of all countries, making it an essential part of communicating across the globe, especially in terms of technology, business, science and education."

But many see it as a symbol to underline its independence and distance itself from Russian influence.

Kazakh, a Turkic language, used to be written in Arabic until the 1920s when the Soviet Union briefly introduced a Latin alphabet for it.

3 Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev ordered the switch to Latin from Russian Clyrillic to break off from its Soviet past Credit: Getty - Contributor

This was later replaced by a Cyrillic one in 1940 based on the Russian alphabet with 42 letters.

But now officials want to return to the a Latin-based alphabet from a Russian Cyrillic one.

Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Friday ordered his government to make the transition by 2025 in a symbolic break with its Soviet past which he said had been "political".

The former Soviet republic of 18 million is a close ally of Russia and has the largest ethnic Russian population of the five Central Asian states that gained independence from Moscow in 1991.

3 Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, with Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev Credit: AP:Associated Press

But Moscow's takeover of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and Putin's pledge to protect compatriots beyond his Russia's borders have troubled the Kremlin's ally.

Putin enraged Kazakh nationalists in 2014 by describing Kazakhstan as part of "the greater Russian world" and saying it never had statehood before 1991.

Nazarbayev, 77, moved to accelerate the long-planned transition to Latin in April, when he penned an article in a state newspaper which said specialists would begin training to teach the alphabet from 2018 and new textbooks would be published.

The country will use a 32-letter Latin alphabet after the switch.

Borat