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Not so new fact that many here may already know: The (in?)famous -stan suffix, coming originally from Persian, is an etymological cousin of State, Street, Statistics, Strategy and Stadt.

In Iran, provinces are called Ostan and some Ostans' names end with -stan (e.g. Ostan of Kurdistan).

By the way, since it's not clear from their names, it may be worth noting that Tajiki and Persian are two dialects of the same language.

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The -istan suffix means "land of". Similar to ScotLand, IreLand, etc.

So Tajikistan means: the land of Tajiks, Afghanistan means the land of Afghans, Kurdistan means the land of Kurds, etc

I did not know that. Apparently they are both from PIE *sta-, "to stand". -stan is "place (where one stands)". State in the sense of condition, status, standing is "how one stands", and state in the sense of nation-state is an association via "state of the country", "state of the republic".

Many countries with non-stan names in English have -stan names in their own languages, like Hindustan.

Also, lots of Mid East or central Asia town names end with -abad (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D8%A2%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%AF#Pers...). Interestingly, so do some large American city names, I can't remember which.

Ok nvm, Carlsbad is an unrelated coincidence

> Also, lots of Mid East or central Asia town names end with -abad

This is also the case in South Asia, especially in areas that were once ruled by Islamic monarchies.

> (in?)famous -stan suffix, coming originally from Persian

Does it come from Persian or some common Indo European language, Sanskrit has something similar as well.

I always thought it's Persian, but it may be older, and it does certainly have cognates in Sanskrit too.

Wiktionary is amazing for such information.

It's an extremely old word

*Farsi. Persia doesn't exist anymore. I find it strange that somewhat uniquely people refer to Iran by its ancient name. We're not speaking anglo-saxonish

Iranian Linguist here.

Persian is correct. If you want to go by what Iranians call it themselves when speaking English, you can even call it /'perʃijæn/.

If you want to call it as an educated Persian speaker, It's Parsi. "Farsi" is recent result of a lenition of starting /p/ in "Parsi", and is originally an informal way to say Parsi (starting in 13th century [Solar Hijri calendar]). For a source, if you go to https://ganjoor.net/ (A good source for all classical Persian poems) and search "فارسی" (Fârsi), the oldest Persian poem with this word you'll find is from 13th century [Solar Hijri calendar]. Literature teachers have recently started to address this in their teachings so the next generation will be calling the language Parsi again.

Both Persia and Iran are correct names (As said by son of the guy who renamed the country internationally). So Persia does still exist.

Persia doesn't exist anymore, and I referenced to the country as Iran, if you check a bit more carefully.

The language, however, is spoken by roughly 100 million people, so I believe it is safe to assume that it still exists. Farsi is an endonym, just like the official language of Austria which is known in English as "German" and not Deutsch, its endonym.

Every single Iranian person I have met always referred to the language as "persian".

Farsi is a Persian dialect, a bit like insisting I (British) speak American or if Spain disappeared as a state that Mexican is the language of Mexico. Or that someone can't be speaking Latin or Sanskrit because they're ancient, it's Italian and Hindi now, or something.

This is like complaining that someone mentions the Spanish language instead of Español.