Chorasmians

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An ancient Iranian people who inhabited the Khwarazm region south of the Aral Sea in Central Asia
2. The members of an old Iranian-speaking nomadic group settled around the lower Amu Darya and the Aral Sea region
3. Peoples of the historical Khwarazm area, an ancient eastern Iranian tribe living along the Oxus delta in Central Asia

Etymology: The Chorasmians were an ancient people of the region around the lower Oxus (Amu Darya) river, in what is now Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and their name is older than any English word for them. In Old Persian the land was "Uvarazmiya", a name that the Greeks rendered as "Khorasmia" and that passed into Latin as "Chorasmia". English took the place name from Latin and then formed an adjective from it by adding the suffix "-an", the same ending found in words like "Roman" or "Persian". That suffix has its own long road into English. It descends from a Proto-Italic form that became Latin "-anus", then passed through Old French "-ain" and Middle English "-an". Because the ending attaches to a place name, the adjective simply means "of Chorasmia", and the plural form "Chorasmians" refers to the people themselves.