Etymology of Pakistan
The name Pakistan (English pronunciation: /ˈpækɪstæn/ (
listen) or /pɑːkiˈstɑːn/ (listen); Urdu: پاکستان [paːkɪˈst̪aːn]) means Land of (the) Spiritually Pure in both Urdu and Persian languages. Many South-central Asian states and regions end with the element -stan, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Balochistan, Kurdistan, and Turkistan. This -stan is formed from the Iranian root *STA "to stand, stay," and means "place (where one stays), home, country". Iranian peoples have been the main inhabitants of the various land regions of the Ancient Persian Empires now owned by the states for over a thousand years. The names are compounds of -stan and the name of the peoples living there. Pakistan is a bit different; its name was coined on 28 January 1933 as Pakstan by Choudhary Rahmat Ali, a Pakistan Movement activist, who published it in his paper Now or Never.[1] by using the suffix -istan from Balochistan preceded by the first letters of Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir and Sindh. The name is actually an acronym that stands for the "thirty million Muslim brethren who lived in Pakistan—by which we mean the Five Northern units of India viz: Punjab, (Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sind, and Baluchistan".[2] The letter i was incorporated to ease pronunciation and forms the linguistically correct and meaningful name.[3]
ReferencesEdit
- ↑ Choudhary Rahmat Ali (28 January 1933). "Now or never: Are we to live or perish for ever?". Columbia University. Retrieved 4 December 2007.
- ↑ Ali, Rahmat. "Rahmat Ali ::Now or Never". The Pakistan National Movement. pp. [Unknown]. Archived from the original on 19 April 2011. Retrieved 14 April 2011.
- ↑ Roderic H. Davidson (1960). "Where is the Middle East?". Foreign Affairs. 38 (4): 665–675. doi:10.2307/20029452. JSTOR 20029452.
