Why is "-istan" an Asian standard suffix for country naming?
I don't know why no one's made a big deal about this (surely Anderson Cooper has riffed on it at some point -- speaking of whom, is that guy Elven?) in the last 3 years' news cycles, but I wanted to know why countries with so many clashing ethnicities, religious groups, and of course languages/dialects all end their state name with "-istan." To wit:
- Afghanistan
- Pakistan
- Uzbekistan
- Kazakhstan
- Kyrgyzstan
- (the once and future) Kurdistan
- Tajikistan
- Turkmenistan
- Waziristan (not even a country, this "tribal region" wants in on the action, too)
Of course, an answer that credits Persian was right under my nose all along -- in fact, it was even posted just weeks after 9/11, when this suffix suddenly meant much more than a few big, empty territories on the far side of the Risk gameboard.