Because in the most widely spoken languages in this region of the world, such as Hindi, Persian and Kyrgyz, “-istan” means “place of residence” of a particular people or ethnic group. According to this principle, Kazakhstan, for example, means “territory of the Kazakhs”; Kyrgyzstan, “territory of the Kyrgyz”; Afghanistan, “land of the Afghans” and so on.
It is something equivalent to adding the suffixes “-lândia” (which comes from land, “earth” in Germanic languages) or “-polis” (“city” in Greek) at the end of names. Petrópolis is the city of Pedro, Teresópolis, that of Teresa. Swaziland is the land of the Swazis – but recently the country changed its name to Eswatini, which precisely means “land of the Swazis” in the local language.
“The form “-stan” derives from an ancient Indo-European linguistic root. This suffix carried the idea of ’stopping’ or ‘remaining’ and gave rise, for example, to the verbs starein Latin, and standin English,” says linguist Mário Ferreira, from the University of São Paulo (USP).
Of stare Latin, including, comes the verb “estar” in Portuguese. That is: thinking about the etymological root of the thing, you can translate the names of these countries, literally, as “where are the Afghans”, “where are the Kazakhs” and so on.
The only exception to this rule is the case of Pakistan, baptized about 20 years before the territory of the country was constituted, in 1947. ”, arising from a combination of the initials of the areas claimed by the future nation. The “p” represented the province of Punjab, while the “k” represented the region of Kashmir, in northwest India”, says Mário.
Note that the names of Islamic countries located in the Middle East and North Africa do not carry the suffix. There, the predominant language is Arabic, which does not have Indo-European roots – it belongs to another trunk, Semitic, shared with Hebrew and Aramaic.