Re: [tied] Re: <>-abad?

Speaking of which, what about -stan both in the Afghanistan/Pakistan area
and in many country names in turkish like yunanistan etc what's
the etymology?

Thanks in advance

Harald

On Wed, 10 Oct 2001, Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:

> It's a Persian placename-forming element meaning "settlement", often
> added to the founder's name, so <X-abad> may mean "(a town) founded
> by X".
>
> Piotr
>
> --- In cybalist@..., petrich@... wrote:
> > In an area from Afghanistan to India and some nearby Central
> > Asian areas, I see a lot of town names of the form Askhabad,
> > Faizabad, Azizabad, Jalalabad, Islamabad, Allahabad -- which
> > have a common element that I interpret as "abad"
> >
> > Does it mean "city/town/village" in some language? Lots of city/
> > town/village names mean something like "<something>-city/
> > town/village", which is a very straightforward sort of name for
> > such a place.
> >
> > Related to that subject, I'm sure that "Newton" is short for
> > "Newtown"; it's an amusing curiosity that Naples (< Ital. Napoli)
> > and Nablus (West Bank) have names that may derive from
> > Greek Neapolis ("New Town"). Which is also the meaning of
> > Russian "Novgorod" and Italian "Villanova", IIRC.
>
>
>
>
>
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