The name
新疆 ('new frontier') was bestowed by the Qing court after the region was fully incorporated into the empire in 1759. It became the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on 1 October 1955, on the sixth anniversary of the PRC. The Uyghurs (
维吾尔族) are a Turkic Muslim people; the region also has large Kazakh, Hui, and Han populations. Short name
新 (Xīn).
