Re: Meaning of Aryan: now, "white people"?

At 2:31:35 PM on Thursday, February 14, 2008, mkelkar2003
wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti"
> <frabrig@...> wrote:

[...]

>> As far as I know, the Finnish word for 'slave'
>> (presumably captured in raids into southern territories),
>> orja-, is considered one of the many loan words from
>> *Proto-Indo-Iranian* (not from Proto-Tocharian) into
>> Uralic which would indicate that:

>> 1. the early habitat of Proto-Indo-Iranians was in an
>> area close to the Central Asian steppe-taiga interface,
>> e.g., near the Urals;

>> 2. these Proto-Indo-Iranians called themselves *arya-.

>> Other Uralic loan words from Proto-Indo-Iranian *arya-
>> are Pre-Saami *orja- > oar'ji-'southwest', a%r'jel-
>> 'southerner'; Estonian ori-, Udmurt var-, Komi ver-,
>> Mordovian ur/a"- 'slave'.

> Apparently Wikipedia does not buy into this fantastical
> story which is a corolloary of the now defunct Aryan
> Invasion Theory. The "arya" slaves of yester years become
> arya the nobles obviously after slaughtering the dark
> skinned Indian dasyus!

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arya

Wikipedia is hardly an authoritative source, and the claim
in this one that the word is related to Latin <rectus>,
German <Recht>, and English <right> is absurd. It hardly
matters, however, since nothing here is particularly
relevant to Francesco's post.

[...]

Brian