Tocharian

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. An ancient group of Indo-European languages spoken in the Tarim Basin region of Central Asia, known from texts dating to around the 6th to 8th centuries CE
2. A family of dead Indo-European languages discovered in Chinese Turkestan, attested in Buddhist manuscripts and administrative documents from medieval times
3. The now-extinct Indo-European language branch of Central Asia, preserved in written records found in the oasis cities of the Silk Road dating to the early medieval period

Etymology: The name "Tocharian" is a mislabel that stuck. The ancient Tochari, or Tukharas, were a people of Bactria, a region in what is now Afghanistan, and the Greeks recorded their name as "Tókharoi". The name itself likely came from an Indo-Iranian source: Old Persian had "tuxāri-", Khotanese "ttahvāra", and Sanskrit "tukhāra". From the Greek plural, Latin formed "Tocharī", and English added the suffix "-ian" to make the adjective. The mislabel happened in the early twentieth century. When manuscripts written in an unknown Indo-European language turned up in the Tarim Basin in western China, scholars connected them with the Tochari mentioned in ancient sources, and so the language took the name. Most scholars now believe that identification was wrong, so the name survives as a label for a language whose speakers may never have been the people it was named after.