Almaty, which used to be the capitol of Kazakhstan = 'alma ata' which means something like 'mother of apples'...
Which is not very relevant anyway, since the real name of the city in Kazakh was always "Almaty". It is surely derived from "alma" (which is Kazakh for "apple") but does not have a direct translation.
Originally it used to be Alma Ata which then became Almatı. This kind of transformation is common in Turkic languages.
Ata does mean father or forefather or grandfather. It is also used in the sense of "ancestor" in a similar sense.
In that sense, it is like көке (köke) which is derived from the word "root". It is not used in Turkey like that, but any Turk would understand why it means "father".
Depends on what you mean by "originally" ;)
The modern city was founded in 1854 when the Russians established the military fortification of Zailiyskoye (renamed Verny in 1855) on the site of the ancient settlement of Almaty, which had been destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century.
In Soviet time (1921) the city was indeed renamed to "Alma-Ata", but only in Russian, in Kazakh the name became "Almaty". In 1993, the government renamed the city from the Russian "Alma-Ata" to the Kazakh name "Almaty".
In any case, it is kind of incorrect to translate "Alma-Ata" from Kazakh, because this name was never used in that language.
There's little doubt that the name comes from the word apple.
I am genuinely curious about how the name Alma Ata which consists of two Turkic words and which how I was taught in school when I was growing up in Turkey is the "Soviet bastardization".
Update: Hmmm ... Wikipedia article also seems to indicate that it was Soviet thing to call it Alma Ata:
> The name Almaty has its roots in the medieval settlement Almatu, that existed near the present-day city.[10] A disputed theory holds that the name is derived from the Kazakh word for 'apple' (алма), and is often translated as "full of apples". Originally it was Almatau which means Apple Mountain. The Russian version of the name was Alma-Ata (Kaz. Father of Apples). Since gaining its independence from the Soviet Union, the use of the Kazakh Almaty is accepted.