 While the official name in Chechen is the same, informally the city is known as "" (""), which literally means "the city () on the Sunzha River ()".In 1996, during the First Chechen War, the Chechen separatists renamed the city Dzhokhar-Ghala (), or Dzhokhar/Djohar for short, after Dzhokhar Dudayev, the first President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.In December 2005, the Chechen parliament voted to rename the city "Akhmadkala" (after Akhmad Kadyrov)—a proposition which was rejected by his son Ramzan Kadyrov, the prime minister and later President of the republic.