Tiraspol′

• Location: Moldova
• Variant names: Tyras, Akerman

'City on the (River) Dniester'. Founded as a Greek colony known as Tyras, the ancient Greek name for the Dniester, and developed into an independent city-state, and a shortening of polis. When the Ottoman Turks arrived in the 16th century they built a huge fortress which they called Akerman. The modern town was founded by Prince Alexander Suvorov (1729–1800), a Russian military commander in Moldova, in 1792 on the site of the ancient Moldavian settlement of Staraya Sukleia which had been burnt by the Turks in 1787. It was given its present Greek-style name in 1795. It was the capital of the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1929–40 and is now the capital of Transdniestria.

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