Aryan

This article is about the English language loanword. For other uses, see Aryan
(disambiguation).

Aryan /ˈɛərjən/ is an English language loanword derived from Sanskrit Arya

('Noble')[1][2][3] and denoting variously

 In scholarly usage,
o Indo-Iranian languages (Iranian & Indo-Aryan)[2][4][5]

 in dated usage,
o the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers,
(no longer widely used within the scholarly community)

 in contemporary usage,
o Among the Hindu/Indian nationalists, the Hindu/Indian people
(Aryan derives from the Sanskrit word Arya)[6]
o in colloquial English, and according to Nazi racial theory, persons
corresponding to the "Nordic", "blond-haired, blue-eyed" physical
ideal of Nazi Germany (the "master race" ideology) [n 1]
o within the ideology of white supremacy, the "White race", i.e.,
Caucasians who are native Indo-Europeans of the Western or
European branch of the Indo-European peoples, as opposed to
the Eastern or Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European peoples.
o The "Aryan race" taken to correspond to the original speakers of
Indo-European languages and their present day descendants. [8]

As an adaptation of the Latin Arianus, referring to eastern part of ancient Iran,

'Arian' has "long been in English language use". [9] Its history as a loan word
began in the late 18th century, when the word was borrowed from Sanskrit
ārya[1] to refer to speakers of North Indian languages.[9] When it was
determined that Iranian languages — both living and ancient — used a similar
term in much the same way (but in the Iranian context as a self-identifier of
Iranian peoples), it became apparent that the shared meaning had to derive
from the ancestor language of the shared past, and so, by the early 19th
century, the word 'Aryan' came to refer to the group of languages deriving from
that ancestor language, and by extension, the speakers of those languages.[10]

Then, in the 1830s, partly based on the now regarded as erroneous theory that
words like "Aryan" could also be found in European languages (such as the idea
that "Eire" derived from "Aryan"), the term "Aryan" came to be used as the
term for the Indo-European language group, and by extension, the original
speakers of those languages. In the 19th century, "language" was considered a
property of "ethnicity", and thus the speakers of the Indo-European languages
came to be called the "Aryan race", as contradistinguished from what came to
be called the "Semitic race". By the late 19th century, among some people, the
notions of an "Aryan race" became closely linked to Nordicism, which posited
Northern European racial superiority over all other peoples (including Indians
and Iranians). This "master race" ideal engendered both the "Aryanization"
programs of Nazi Germany, in which the classification of people as "Aryan" and
"non-Aryan" was most emphatically directed towards the exclusion of Jews.[11][n
2]
By the end of World War II, the word 'Aryan' had become associated by many
with the racial theories and atrocities committed by the Nazi regime.

In colloquial modern English it is often used to signify the Nordic racial ideal
promoted by the Nazis. As the American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language states at the beginning of its definition, " Aryan, a word nowadays
referring to the blond-haired, blue-eyed physical ideal of Nazi Germany,
originally referred to a people who looked vastly different. Its history starts with
the ancient Indo-Iranians, peoples who inhabited parts of what are now Iran,
Afghanistan, Pakistan and India."[7][12] A theory propounded in The History and
Geography of Human Genes (1994), says blond hair became predominant in
Northern Europe beginning about 3,000 BC, in the area now known as
Lithuania, among the recently arrived Proto-Indo-European settlers (according
to the Kurgan Hypothesis), and the trait spread quickly thereafter through
sexual selection as the European branch of the Proto-Indo-Europeans settled
Scandinavia.[13] If this theory is correct, it means the original Proto-Indo-
Europeans, who lived before 3,000 BC in an area farther east north of the
Caspian sea, could not have had blond hair; they would have had dark brown
or black hair.

In present-day India, the original ethno-linguistic signifier has been less

emphasized, the denotation having been semantically supplemented by other,
secondary, meanings—the term is widely used in India in the names of business
enterprises.[14][15] In Iran, the original self-identifier lives on in ethnic names like
"Alani", "Ir".[16] The word Iran is the Persian word for land/place of the Aryan[17]
(see also Iranian peoples). In present-day academia, the terms "Indo-Iranian"
and "Indo-European" have, according to many, made most uses of the term
'Aryan' obsolete, and 'Aryan' is now mostly limited to its appearance in the term
"Indo-Aryan" to represent (speakers of) North Indian languages. Notions of an
"Aryan race" defined as being composed of those of the Western or European
branch of the Indo-European peoples is used in the context of fascist
nationalism, an ideology of nationhood defined by ancestry.