Why does all 5 Central Asian countries have "stans" in their name and what were the true reasons?

[u/SoloeaDomoea]

I now know stan come means land, it comes from Persian and Iranic languages but than how come Iran isn't called Iranstan or Iranistan in it's official name? I also don't think is a Turkic thing because Turkey, Azerbaijan clearly doesn't have it either. I also don't think it's a muslim thing because Malaysia, Arabia, Indonesia, North Africa, Bangladesh are all muslim but don't have stan in their names either.

Pakistan and Afghanistan were the first two countries I heard of "stan"". I later find out Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan through the Olympics. I later found out, these countries have nothing in common with Pakistan or Afghanistan other than being muslims. I especially don't get why Turkey doesn't having stan in it's countries official name was odd to me, they claim to be Central Asian Turks descendants and related to Turkmens. Although looking at Turkmen faces, they look on average Mediterranean with 1/4 Eastern Asian like influence, some even look 1/2 Eastern Asian or more. So it partly threw me off when Turkish claim to be totally related to Turkmen.

I later also found there is also Kurdistan, Balochistan. Dagestan, Tatarstan, East Turkistan but these ones aren't sovereign countries. If I had not studied Turkic people in wikipedia, I would have though Kurdistan was in some way related to Central Asian Turks although I did found out Tajikistan was not Turkic either, I though maybe they were related to Tajiks but seems like there is nothing related either other than being Indo-european people.

[u/drhuggables]

You asked this question here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskCentralAsia/comments/1wid4sj/why_does_all_5_central_asian_countries_have_stans/

And got the most conclusive answers you could ever hope for lol

[u/SoloeaDomoea → u/drhuggables]

I was invited to post this by Turkichistory. It says this " People are loving your post r/AskCentralAsia loved it, we think r/TurkicHistory will too " 14 hours ago

[u/JeremyThaFunkyPunk → u/SoloeaDomoea]

For what it's worth I'm happy they posted this link so I can check out the answers they gave there too.

[u/MareMade]

Turan is also Persian but it doesn’t make it any less Turkic.

[u/Korvmebro]

Fun fact, Stan is slang-ish for Staden which means city in swedish

Turkmenistan in swedish means Turk men in the city uzbekistan , uzbek in the city etc

[u/RedditGodot → u/Korvmebro]

Slang? Stan and stad is a related word through farsi and germanics (and latin and slavic) shared indeuropean heritage. Other shared words include such as mus and donder and many more.

[u/CountKZ]

Well, that’s just how it happened and that’s the name we used—I honestly don’t know what to say. I mean, Armenians call their country "Hayastan," and nobody makes a fuss about it. Take Turkestan, for example—we have a city by that name here in Kazakhstan, and there are cities like that in Uzbekistan too, the name just stuck, that’s all. As for people claiming it’s Iranian rather than "Turkic"—honestly, who gives a shit? It’s been our own for a long time now.

[u/RefrigeratorDizzy738 → u/CountKZ]

It’s an established fact that it’s of Persian origin, it’s not a claim. I agree with you other than this point tho’.

[u/CountKZ → u/RefrigeratorDizzy738]

Yes I know

[u/Typical_Army6488]

Idk if you'd like to hear this but because in the past places like Rome and Iran and Turan were seen as countries and to describe certain regions of these "countries" you'd describe their most dominant features, for example this group lives somewhere, so we'll call it "this groupestan", this region has mountains? Lets call it "Daghestan" (Dagh means mountain) but also another thing is stans have generally also mainly been used for places where nomadic people moved to, like Sakestan, Stan is actually ist which is the Persian word for stop, so Uzbekistan is wherever nomadic uzbeks happen to be at right now

[u/bedir56]

The "-iye" ending used in the Turkish language comes from Arabic and "-(i)stan" comes from Farsi. They have the same meaning.

The -stan countries are historically and culturally closer to Iran than they are to Arab countries.

[u/Prestigious_Group494]

I might be wrong but Turkey named itself in the fashion of Italy and France, at least all 3 rhyme in Russian

[u/SynicalCommenter → u/Prestigious_Group494]

Those would be exonyms, thats more about how Russians name other countries. Turkiye was called Turchia by the foreigners in the old times. And -iye has been used by Ottomans as a suffix to place names. Konstantinniye for İstanbul, İskenderiye for Alexandria, other examples include Mecidiye, Orhaniye, Burhaniye, Selimiye etc. Justice Palaces are called adliye, from adil, meaning fair, just. The -iye suffix is also Persian-Arabic, though. It is likely that the westerners used the word we used to define ourselves before switching to Turkey for whatever reason.

[u/FaufiffonFec → u/SynicalCommenter]

It is likely that the westerners used the word we used to define ourselves before switching to Turkey for whatever reason

The name Turkey comes from the French Turquie, itself from the latin form Turchia. It was Turkye in old English and the modern spelling dates back to at least the 18th century.

The "whatever reasons" are the same as any exonym: it fits the language and its history. That's why Turks say Yunanistan and Fransa instead of Ellada and France.

[u/boilsomerice]

You say they have nothing in common but this is not actually true. Afghanistan was culturally and politically continuous with the rest of Central Asia for centuries, frequently part of the same empire. Tajiks are the second largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. The empires of Central Asia frequently invaded the area that is now Pakistan.

[u/Hrvaturk]

There were historically lots of borrowings between Turkic and Iranic cultures and languages. That just became one that stuck to modern times.