Akh Chayaan, the 'White Creator', is one of the pure, beneficent deities of the Khakas upper world, named in the ethnographic record alongside Khudai and Ymai-Iche among the powers of heaven. The epithet 'white' (akh) marks him as a light, life-giving being opposed to the dark forces of the underworld, and his name shares the root chayaan, 'creation', with the wider Khakas vocabulary of the demiurge.