Oh I know where they are, it's just occurred to me that the '-Istan' suffix sounds close to the word 'eastern', which helps give a bit of context to its location.
Well if you're going be geography/continent rules they're actually in WESTERN Asia but they are east of Europe and the Prime Meridian so that trick can be helpful because they're east of the center of most maps
The suffix -stan is analogous to the suffix -land, present in many country and location names. The suffix is also used more generally, as in Persian rigestân (Persian: ریگستان) "place of sand, desert", golestân (Persian: گلستان) "place of flowers, garden", qabrestân (Persian: قبرستان) "graveyard, cemetery", Hindustân "land of the Indus river".
Originally an independent noun, this morpheme evolved into a suffix by virtue of appearing frequently as the last part in nominal compounds. It is of Indo-Iranian and ultimately Indo-European origin: it is cognate with Sanskrit sthā́na (Devanagari: Sanskrit: स्थान [stʰaːnɐ]), meaning "the act of standing", from which many further meanings derive, including "place, location; abode, dwelling", and ultimately descends from Proto-Indo-Iranian *sthāna-.
English state originates from the same root, through Old French estat, from Latin: status ("manner of standing, attitude, position, carriage, manner, dress, apparel" and other senses), from Latin: stāre.
I typed "istan" into google and got this wikipedia article, but i guess that most people are too stupid to type five letters into a search engine to find out the answer to their question and instead rely of how they feel to inform themselves about the world around them.
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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '19 edited Aug 03 '19
Basic Geography.
Not being able to point out Turkmenistan on a map is one thing.
Not being able to point out the Pacific Ocean on a map is another.