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-stan is a Persian suffix that seems functionally equivalent to the Germanic -land.

Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan are the sovereign -stan states.

Even though -stan is a Persian suffix only Afghanistan and Tajikistan have majority Persian populations.

While Turkic and Indo-Aryan languages do borrow from Persian culture it seems unusual that the names of their countries would be Persianized. The endonym of Kazakhstan includes -stan while the endonym of e.g. Finland doesn't include -land.

So how did these countries end up with -stan names? Also when did these names first appear in writing?

For the -stan countries in the Russian sphere of influence were the -stan names ever mentioned during the Russian Empire?

Did they all appear synchronously?

For Afghanistan I found that the Kingdom of Afghanistan was declared in 1926 and before that they were referred to as the Durrani or Afghan Empire. The Turkic people historically were in Khanates, Khaganates or Hordes.

user52066
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    Thank you for your question; please consider revising it to be more in line with our community expectations. Like other stacks, we expect questions to provide evidence of prior research. That helps us to understand the question, and avoids our repeating work you've already done. Our [help], and other stacks provide additional resources to assist with revisions. Please revise your question to document your preliminary research. – MCW Aug 26 '21 at 14:58
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    I don't have sources right now, but I remember reading the Persian was historically a prestige language in that area. – Mike Aug 26 '21 at 16:15
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    You also have kodakestan = kindergarten, timarestan = mental institution etc. – Jan Aug 26 '21 at 19:20
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    Nitpick: "Finland" is the endonym used by the Swedish-speaking population of Finland. – jkej Aug 27 '21 at 12:40
  • Turkish uses that suffix for rather more countries than most languages do: https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosya:Europe_countries_map_tr.png – phoog Aug 28 '21 at 00:56
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    @phoog but for itself it's Turkiye not Turkistan – jtallk Aug 28 '21 at 05:13
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    Let's not forget Kurdistan, either, even if Turkey doesn't want it to exist as a country. – nick012000 Aug 28 '21 at 11:27
  • As a side note: the -ia suffix that is common for countries or places in Latin or English, is replaced by -stan in Persian translation. e.g. Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Armenia, etc. But sometimes this suffix is just dropped in translation. e.g. Albania, Bolivia, Tunisia, etc. There are cases that both dropped-suffix and replaced-with-stan versions are valid, such as India. – polfosol Aug 28 '21 at 12:30
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    Lots of cities and towns in the US have a -ville prefix, even if they were not originally settled by Francophones. – RonJohn Aug 28 '21 at 20:16
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    In your list of -stan countries you missed one VERY big one: India. They call themselves Hindustan in their own language (English of course call them India) – slebetman Aug 29 '21 at 03:04
  • Re "Afghanistan and Tajikistan have majority Persian populations.": That is actually true - Hazaras 9% and Pashtuns 48% of the population in Afghanistan ("Pashtuns are an Iranian ethnic group ... native language is Pashto, an Eastern Iranian language. Additionally, ethnic Pashtuns in Afghanistan speak the Dari dialect of Persian as a second language."). – Peter Mortensen Aug 29 '21 at 11:21

3 Answers3

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The Persian suffix stān is much older than any of the “stans” in modern Central Asia. It goes back to proto-Indo-Iranian as represented by Sanskrit sthāna- “standing place” (already in the Rigveda) and Old Persian stāna- with the same meaning. In early New Persian (texts from the 10th century AD onwards) we have names like Turkistān “land of the Turks”, Čīnistān “China”, Hindūstān “India” and many others. These names are all well known in the Persianate cultures of Central Asia and India, where -stān becomes a productive suffix for forming names of countries, even countries as far distant as Lehistan (the Turkish name for Poland).

fdb
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  • What this seems to be leading towards to me is that the name may be "close enough" to what an Indo-Aryan would say to go ahead and use. Persian is from that same branch of Indo-European, after all. – T.E.D. Aug 26 '21 at 17:01
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    There are actually somewhat older examples of that suffix used productively. The Babylonian Talmud (compiled around 500 CE under Sassanid rule) mentions "inner" and "outer" Sakistan (presumably Scythia). – Meir Aug 26 '21 at 17:04
  • @Meir. Could you give a text reference? I cannot find this passage. – fdb Aug 27 '21 at 10:53
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    @fdb Yoma 10a. – Meir Aug 27 '21 at 13:13
  • @Meir. Thank you! Very helpful. – fdb Aug 27 '21 at 13:57
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No, the terms are not all contemporary. Afghanistan is recorded in the 13th century; some of the others appear to date to the 20th century. Pakistan is 1933, the others probably date from either the Soviet federation or independence in 1991

Also note hat tip to @jamesqf that Balochistan is a -stan predating Pakistan, therefore not all the -stans appeared simultaneously. I can't find a clear date for the first use of the name Balochistan, but it is earlier than Pakistan.

Below I've provided superficial answers to what seemed to be the core of the original question. I'm not clear on the scope of the ancillary questions, but the sources provided should provide a starting point for further research. Note that in several cases it isn't clear whether the term refers to a state (OP specifies a "sovereign state") vs a subordinate political unit or a culture area

Afghanistan

13th century

The earliest mention of the term "Afghanistan" appears in the 13th century in Tarikh nama-i-Herat of Sayf ibn Muhammad ibn Yaqub al-Herawi, mentioning it as a country between Khorasan and Hind, paying tributes to the country of Shamsuddin.[19] Wikipedia:Afghanistan

Kazhakstan

1962

See The So-Called Virgin Lands of Kazakhstan 1962 hat tip to @jan

Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Wikipedia:Kazhakstan A more complete treatment can be found in Wikipedia:KazakhSovietSocialistRepublic

hat tip to @default-locale with minor edits "Kazakhstan" was supposedly mentioned in XVI century work by Zainuddin Mahmood Wasifi (source in Russian, (no English translation available)). Both "Kazakhstan" and "Uzbekistan" were widely used in the early XX century. For example, the newspaper was renamed to "Socialistic Qazaqstan" in 1932 and "Uzbekistan" was mentioned in 1928 magazine.

Pakistan

1933

The name of the country was coined in 1933 by Choudhry Rahmat Ali, a Pakistan Movement activist, who published it in a pamphlet Now or Never, using it as an acronym ("thirty million Muslim brethren who live in PAKISTAN"), and referring to the names of the five northern regions of the British Raj: Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan.[26] Wikipedia:Pakistan

Tajikistan

1924

Tajikistan has existed as a state only since the Soviet Union decreed its existence in 1924.StateUniversity.com

Turkmenistan

1956

See Soviet Turkmenistan, a work from 1956 hat tip @jan

The name Turkmenistan is derived from Persian, meaning "land of the Turkmen". Before 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, called the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic. mcgill.ca

Uzbekistan

1991

During the Soviet era Uzbekistan was the equivalent of an American state known as the Uzbek Soviet Republic. It became Uzbekistan after independence in 1991. FactsAndDetails

MCW
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One additional thing to add to the excellent answers already given is that -stan is actually used productively in Persian for other words as well, such as bimarestan (بیمارستان) for “hospital” — literally “land of patients”. Or gulestan (گلستات) for “garden” — literally “land of the flowers.”

So no matter what the historical record shows about the first recorded instance of a particular place name, the fact that it's a productive suffix to begin with suggests that any Persian-speaker (or Persian-influenced speaker) could form these sorts of names on the fly, whenever s/he wanted to.

adam.baker
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    In the Avesta we have already aspō.stāna- “horse place, stable”. – fdb Aug 27 '21 at 11:04
  • not forgetting Ferengistan! – user_1818839 Aug 27 '21 at 12:01
  • @user_1818839 Is that the Persian name for Ferenginar, the home world of Star Trek's Ferengi? – Barmar Aug 27 '21 at 13:19
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    It refers to Europeans (Franks), [farangi] فرنگی. You're not the first to wonder about a Star Trek connection. :-) – adam.baker Aug 27 '21 at 14:11
  • Wikipedia says that Ecbatana is "the place of gathering" in Old Persian. (I haven't confirmed that.) But that would presumably be the same suffix. – adam.baker Aug 27 '21 at 14:14
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    For what it's worth, frengi is also the word for syphilis. Probably meaning the "Frankish disease" – Boluc Papuccuoglu Aug 27 '21 at 20:18
  • @adam.baker. The Greek Ecbatana stands for Old Persian Hamgmatāna, the mediaeval and modern Hamadān, from the root gma- “to come”, so it is not connected with stāna-. – fdb Aug 28 '21 at 08:46