Rbls 500. In 1991 a "special group" of designers was set up: Mendybay Alin, Timur Suleymenov, Asimsaly Duzelkhanov and Khayrulla Gabzhalilov. Thus November 15 is celebrated as the "Day of National Currency of Republic of Kazakhstan". In 1995 a tenge-printing factory opened in Kazakhstan. The first consignment of tenge banknotes were printed in the United Kingdom and the first coins were struck in Germany. In February 2019, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed a bill into law that will remove all Russian captions from future tenge banknotes and coins. Etymology The word tenge in Kazakh and in most other Turkic languages means a set of scales (cf the old Uzbek tenga or the Tajik borrowed term tanga). The origin of the word is the Mongolic word teng (ᠲᠡᠩ) which means "being equal, balance". The name of this currency is thus similar to the pound, lira, peso, taka, and shekel. The name of the currency is also related to the Russian word for money / , which the Old Russian language borrowed from Turkic sources. Symbol Originally a simple letter "Т" was used to denote amounts in tenge, this is still recommended when the tenge symbol is not available. In autumn 2006 the National Bank of Kazakhstan organised a competition for a unique symbol for the currency and received over 30,000 applications. On March 20, 2007, two days before the Nauryz holiday, the National Bank of Kazakhstan approved a graphical symbol for the tenge: ₸. On March 29, 2007, the Bank announced two designers from Almaty, Vadim Davydenko and Sanzhar Amirkhanov, as winners for the design of the symbol of the Kazakhstani tenge. They shared a prize of ₸1,000,000 and the title of "parents" of the tenge symbol. The character was included in Unicode 5.2.0 (August 2009) at code point U+20B8. Coins While older coins were struck in Germany, current coins are struck domestically, by the Kazakhstan Mint in Oskemen. First series (1993) In 1993, the first series of coins were introduced in denominations of 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 tiyin featuring the national arms and were struck in bronze. The coins of T 1, T 3, T 5, T 10, and T 20 were struck in cupro-nickel and depicted stylized and mythical animals. The coins of this period circulated alongside tiyin and low denomination tenge notes of equal value. Tiyin coins were withdrawn as of February 7, 2001 and lost