Aryan

Meanings

Noun

• A member of an alleged master race with no fixed definition, comprising people of Germanic descent (in the narrowest sense), or all non-Jewish Caucasians (in the broadest sense)
• A person of Caucasian ethnicity; a white non-Jew.
• A Caucasian racist, often one who is an Aryan in the first sense.
• An Indo-European, a Proto-Indo-European.
• An Indo-Iranian.
• A subdivision of the Caucasian racial and linguistic grouping, when that grouping is defined as consisting of Aryans, Semites, and Hamites.

Adjective

• Pertaining, in racial theories, to the (alleged) Aryan master race.
• Pertaining to the Caucasian ethnicity.
• Pertaining to Caucasian racists or their organisations, theories, etc.
• Of or pertaining to Indo-Iranian peoples, cultures, and languages.
• Of or pertaining to Indo-European peoples, cultures and languages.

Proper Noun

• The language of the original Aryans.

Origin

• From Sanskrit आर्य -n. The Sanskrit word is from Proto-Indo-Iranian *áryas (the original Indo-Iranian autonym). Borrowed into English in the 19th century, at first as a term for the Indo-Iranian languages, and later partly extended to the Indo-European languages and peoples following a theory by Friedrich Schlegel that connected the Indo-Iranian words arya/ā́rya with German Ehre and some older Germanic names, thus assuming that it was the original Indo-European autonym meaning "the honorable people". The original meaning of the Indo-Iranian autonym and its possible Indo-European origin/cognates are disputed (see the Wikipedia article for further details).
• The same Proto-Indo-Iranian root is the ultimate source of the country name Iran.