"Arya" has no cognates outside of Indo-Aryan? What about Greek
areté, German Ehren, English earnest, and Swedish ära?
It was borrowed from Ugaritic? No. Ugaritic only dates to around
1400-1200 BC, no older than Sanskrit.
What does Hitler have to do with it? I think we have an example here
of emotions, politics, and irrationality distorting reality. Some
people are still suppressing the truth because they are afraid that,
somehow, they would be agreeing with the Nazis. This is why after World
War Two the British archaeologists went wild with a theory that there
were no invasions in prehistory, but only cultural borrowings. This
prejudice is still with us, to some extent.
A cognate for "Arya" existed in the world's first civilization.
Sumerian has a word "ar" which means "glory, renown."
Bomhard, in THE NOSTRATIC MACROFAMILY, lists a proto-Nostratic root
*har-/*her- "to be superior, to be higher in status or rank, to be
above or over"
"A. Proto-Indo-European *hher-yo- [*hhar-yo-] 'a superior, a person
higher in status or rank':
Sanskrit arya-h 'a respectable or honorable person' , arya-h 'master,
lord'; Old Irish aire 'nobleman, man of rank..."
B. Proto-Afroasiatic *har-/*her- 'to be superior, to be higher in
status or rank, to be above or over': Proto-Semitic *har-/*hur-
'noble, freeborn'....Hebrew hor 'noble'; Arabic hurr 'noble,
free-born'; Ugaritic hrr 'free'; Sabaean hrr 'freeman,
free-born men'; Geez/Ethiopic harawi 'free-born, nobleman',
harawanna 'freedom', harannat 'freedom; Egyptian hry 'chief,
master, overseer, superior, hr 'on, upon, over, hrw 'upper part,
top..."
Mallory's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF INDO-EUROPEAN CULTURE lists Indo-Iranian,
Hittite and Lycian cognates. It also says "OIr aire 'freeman
(whether commoner or noble); noble (as distinct from commoner)' (the
latter meaning may be rather from *prios, a derivative of 'first'; the
Gaulish personal names with Ario-,, e.g. Ario-manus, presumably contain
'noble'....Oswald Szemerényi's suggestion that it derives from
Ugaritic word meaning 'kinsman' is hardly compelling." And, he
probably even has the wrong Ugaritic word. In Ugaritic "araninu" means
"I shall exalt".
There are also some intriguing words in other language families such as
Polynesian "ariki" for "noble", and Japanese "aruji" for "head of the
house, master, landlord, head, employer". In Altaic languages and
Japanese there are many words with cognates in Indo-European, especially
having to do with "ruler", "king", "horse", "chariot", "wagon", and the
like. I once read a book which I think was called Der Uraltäische
Sprachstamm by Heinrich Winkler which was full of examples from Old
Japanese. There is also "kung" for "prince" and "riku" for kingdom.
Compare Japanese "kuniriku" and German "Königreich", for "kingdom."
Turkic and Mongolian also have many cognates. The Old Turkish word for
king was "qang". Mongolian "khan".
http://www.delphi.com/paleolinguistic