Why is "-an" such a popular ending in Mid-East place names?

Question

Examples:
Kazakhstan, Iran, Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.

Answer 1

Iran does not belong in the same grouping. The suffix "stan" in the other three means "land" in the family of languages that is predominant in Central Asia. So, Kazakhstan simply means "land of the Kazakhs".

Note that many place names are different in the local language then the name we use for it in English.

Examples:

English: Germany
German: Deutschland
Spanish: Alemania

The following link has a comprehensive list of place names in various languages. It is interesting for those of us interested in such things: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_names_in_various_languages_(A-C)

Answer 2

look closer: EngLAND, ScotLAND, IreLAND, SwitzerLAND, NetherLANDs, NewfoundLAND, GreenLAND, you name it.

same in those countries. Except that your "land" is their "stan" or "an".

and don't forget that you're looking just at your English language perspective! SwitzerLAND is called Schweiz in Germany, Suisse in French, Svizzera in Italian.

The Germans are Saxons, so they also say "Deutschland" - but funnily enough the English have decided to call it Germany (after Germania, inherited from the Roman conquerors), when the logic would have a word similar to the Germany word.


Hope this helps

Answer 3

Iran is the only middle eastern country on the list. So it's irrelavent.

Answer 4

-stan means "homeland", but sometimes it's abbreviated. Iran means land of the Aryans: Ir - Aryan and -an for -stan.

Answer 5

I believe -istan is like "'s land"

For example, the Paki's land is Pakistan
The Uzbeki's land is Uzbekistan

Iran is unrelated.